Starting in the Basement

The weather is heating up here.  By tomorrow it is going to be approximately 100 million degrees and I might die. I DO NOT handle the heat well and I am even more nervous with the baby because it turns out babies like to be close to you and when I am hot I DO NOT LIKE TO BE TOUCHED.  We only have air conditioning in our bedroom, and even there it does not work very well, so for the next couple of days Camille and I will be camped out in the bedroom drinking iced drinks.  With the hot weather I am trying to think of recipes that do not require a lot of cooking but are still more substantial than a sandwich or plain salad.  Yesterday I was on a mission to make a salade nicoise so Camille and I went on a hot search for anchovies and nicoise olives.  Unfortunately we only found the anchovies because I was not willing to walk all the way to Whole Foods for olives and Trader Joe’s has a lame olive selection. Any ideas on what to do with leftover anchovies?

Salade Nicoise

You can use a variety of vegetables for this salad.  I have listed what I used and the amounts depend on how many salads you are making.  Be generous with the vinaigrette.

Small potatoes, red, yukons or fingerlings work well, boiled and cooled

Green beans, boiled for 2 minutes and cooled

Orange pepper, sliced thin

Tomato, sliced into chunks

Canned tuna in olive oil

Anchovies

Hard-boiled eggs, cut in half

Lettuce

Fresh herbs for finishing

Directions:  After cooking potatoes toss in a bit of the vinaigrette and let cool.  Wash and dry lettuce and toss with vinaigrette.  Assemble your salad on a platter or on individual plates and sprinkle herbs and more vinaigrette over the vegetables.  Serve with bread.

Basic Vinaigarette

This recipe makes a cup of dressing but you can scale down if you are only using it for one salad

1/4 cup wine vinegar (red or white)

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

3/4 cup olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions: Mix all the ingredients in a jar and shake before using.

Family nap the morning after the salad…the cat lasted about 2.5 minutes on me before I got too hot and she had to be evicted from the bed.

We have almost 12 weeks of baby experience here in the basement and have narrowed down a few of our favorite baby items.  If you know somebody having a baby you may want to consider some of these as gifts.  Of course, everybody will have a different experience, but this is what has worked for us.

There is a big push for swaddling babies because they sleep an average of 45 minutes longer when swaddled.  That is HUGE for a new parent.  Camille has been swaddled since day 1 and I am still not ready to give it up.  There are many products to help with swaddling and we ended up with a lot of them.  For the first few weeks she was too small for any of these products so we just used blankets similar to these that my aunt got us from Pottery Barn.

We use the swaddling technique from the video, The Happiest Baby on the Block – The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Baby Sleep Longer (DVD), which also has some great tips for soothing babies.

When she gained a little weight we started using swaddle products and the easiest so far has been the Summer Swaddleme.

She rarely busts out of these although we have used them so much the velcro is starting to get a bit weaker.

Another unexpected gift was the Wubbanub.  These are soothie pacifiers with little stuffed toys attached.  The toy keeps it in place and eventually gives them something to hang onto.  Genius!!  We have the puppy but there are a ton of cute animals available.

Although there are lots of great, and adorable, pajama options for babies the last thing you want to do at 11, 1, 3, 5, and 7 in the morning is deal with snapping up pj legs after changing a diaper.  The gowns are awesome for sleeping and sometimes to hang out in all day if you have nowhere to go.  My favorite gown has snaps all the way down so you don’t even have to deal with the over-the-head dressing issue.  I don’t have the one below specifically but it looks nice and would make a great gift!  In fact, I think I am going to get this one because we only have one with snaps and it is dirty now.  Need more!

Snapibasic Side Snap Opening Gown

Once summer starts (which it has here in Boston) I am always on the hunt to make the perfect burger.  Last night I think I found the best burger so far, and it was super easy.  Unfortunately I was too hungry to take a picture but it doesn’t really look like anything special.  Just picture a homemade hamburger with onions and pickles.  I used a lower fat beef but compensated by adding in some other fat, because that is how I roll.  ; )

Burger

(makes 3 burgers)

1 pound 90-93% beef

1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon dijon mustard

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

1 tablespoon cold butter

3 slices cheddar cheese

Directions:  Add all ingredients to beef and mix just to combine.  Do not overmix.  Form 3 patties.  Cut the tablespoon of butter into 3 pieces and insert one into the middle of each patty.  Right before cooking, salt and pepper both sides of they patty (if you do this too early you will lose some of the moisture in the burger).  Grill burgers to desired doneness, melting the cheese on the patty at the end.

Onion Marmalade

1 medium red onion

1 cup water

1 teaspoon ground coriander

2 tablespoons butter

Directions:  Add onion and water to a saucepan and bring to a boil.  Add the coriander and butter and season with salt and pepper.  Let simmer, stirring often, for about 20 minutes or until most of the liquid is gone.

Burger Assembly

Grill or toast hamburger buns.  If grilled, you can add a little melted butter to the bun before grilling.  Spread a generous amount of onion marmalade on the bun with the burger.  Top with sliced pickles.  Enjoy!

Frenchie’s mom sent some pictures of him as a child as well as some other family pictures.  She also sent white linen overalls for Camille.  LOVE the French clothes!

Here is Frenchie when he was 1 day old.  He looks like a generic baby.

Here he is at his baptism.  His mother’s hair is so fabulous!

I think he is around 2 years old here.  What a cutie!

Another one, around 2 I think.  The hair just gets better and better.

And my favorite.  Is that a boy or a girl?  Can you tell it was the 70′s??  Something about this reminds me of the kid from The Shining.  REDRUM!!

We can only hope that Camille turns out this cute and with just as much hair!

Last Friday Camille celebrated her 2 month birthday!  I wanted to do something for each month that we could document in pictures to watch her grow and since there are just a few things I do well (and I’m addicted to sugar) I decided to bake for each month.  The first month I made a raspberry cake with lemon buttercream topped with lemon curd.  The recipe was supposed to be a layer cake but since I knew I would have to eat most of it myself I only made one layer, which ended up looking a little sad.

Camille was also not thrilled about the photo shoot but she will appreciate it someday!  : )

Her 2 month birthday came right in time because I saw this post about cupcakes and HAD TO MAKE THEM IMMEDIATELY!  I love me some marshmallows so I am always trying to incorporate them into my baking.  I also noticed that Stop and Shop (our local grocery store) is carrying Jumbo Mallows and I needed an excuse to buy them.  They are HUGE!  I think each marshmallow is about 4 regular large marshmallows.  2 of them would make up Camille’s head.

When I went to the store to buy the ingredients for these cupcakes I was already a little ashamed of my shopping basket.  To make matters worse, one of my new mom friends was there and I ran into my coworker who doesn’t eat carbs.  I tried my best to hide the contents of my basket but that bag of Jumbo marshmallows was hard to hide.

I love that the package says, “great for snacking.”  Snacking to me implies that you can eat more than one but one of these babies is already 90 calories!  However, there is a cool recipe for a single serving of a rice crispy treat on the bag.  One marshmallow, a little butter and a little cereal in the microwave and voila, a fresh treat!  Now that is a snack.

Anyway, back to Camille.  I made a half recipe of these awesome S’more cupcakes so that we could put them in the shape of the number 2 for the birthday picture.  (BTW, they were delicious, I highly recommend these cupcakes)

Also, since my friend Jen gave me some beautiful lilies for Mother’s Day, I wanted to add those into the picture as well.  I posed the beautiful Camille next to the lovely lilies and the yummy cupcakes and innocently bumped her head into one of the flowers.  Next thing we know, the poor baby has a very bright yellow stain on her thinly haired head.  At first I tried to pretend like nothing happened and then Frenchie noticed and tried to brush it off but the damage had been done.  Man that stuff stains!  Her poor little head is still yellow after lots of wiping and two baths.

Of course on Monday she had her two month appointment with the nurse practitioner so I was worried what she would think of her new “blonde” look.  As the nurse asked me the normal questions and Camille sat calmly on my lap, I could her taking peaks at her head.  Finally she asked if I had any questions and I told her the story of the flowers.  Apparently our story made her day.  She thought it was about the funniest story she had heard all month.  I was embarrassed but I am glad I could make her day.  More importantly, her stats were great.  When she left the hospital she was in the 3rd percentile for weight at 5 pounds, 7 ounces.  She is now 10 pounds, 3 ounces and in the 30th percentile!  She was in the 5th percentile for length and is now in the 70th percentile at 23 inches!  And she said she is sitting up like a 4 month old and has great neck control.  What a superstar!

I can’t wait to see what the next month brings.  I am already planning out her 3 month picture.

As I begin to exercise again I realized I need to decide which types of exercise I want to prioritize.  I feel overwhelmed by the possibilities now that my body is my own again (mostly, except for my milk bags).  Should I run, do step aerobics, bootcamp, power yoga, or try something new?  When I was pregnant I decided that I really wanted to try kickboxing because I want to work on my self-confidence and ass-kicking abilities, but I would like to find a class for that and right now I am not ready to leave the little peanut for an exercise class.

Two weeks ago I started doing Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred and have done it a few times each week.  It is a great workout but I am already bored with Level 1 even though I am not ready to go to Level 2 so I knew I needed to add something else.  This week I decided to go back to yoga and I wanted to talk a little bit about my history with yoga.

I started doing yoga in 1999, my sophomore year of college, at Lewis and Clark College.  Some of you may know that I graduated from Oberlin College but you may not know that after my freshman year I left Oberlin to go back home to Portland and spent a year at Lewis and Clark.  It was a very odd time in my life because I was a bit of a mess and I didn’t know what I was doing.  I think Lewis and Clark had an exercise class requirement and I signed up for yoga for the mind-body aspect because I thought that was something I really needed at that time.  Taking a college class was a great introduction to yoga because I really learned the fundamentals of the practice like breathing correctly and how to do the basic poses correctly and without injury.  Since then I have done yoga off and on.  I have taken college classes at Oberlin, classes at many gyms, gone to private studios and I often do my own style at home.   I think every yogi has their favorite poses and one that I always look forward to and do on my own is tree pose.

I feel like tree pose is fitting because I love trees.  I know, very original.  Are there people who do not love trees?  I think my appreciation of trees, or at least the consciousness of my appreciation, began at outdoor school in 6th grade.  The counselors made us pick a favorite tree, sit down with our notebooks, and write about what we saw around us.  I discovered at that moment how comforting trees are and what they give to us.  A cover from the rain, something to lean against, a root to sit on.  Living in the city now I often crave walking through the woods and being surrounded by trees.  It is incredibly comforting to me.  Where is this post going?  I really don’t know, but let’s go back to yoga.

Tree pose is a balancing pose and is meant to show the balance and calmness of a tree.  To do the pose you bring one foot up your leg as far as you can and put your hands above your head or in prayer pose.  The foot can land above or below your knee, it doesn’t matter, but I always work to get my foot as high as possible.  I love this pose because I am truly able to clear my mind, which I think you are supposed to do during all the yoga poses.  However, during a balancing pose, if your mind wanders you lose your balance and you’ll have to drop a foot or fall over.  My inability to bring attention to myself makes it impossible for me to fall out of balancing poses during a group class.  Somebody might LOOK at me!  Gahh!  So I concentrate on my foot rooting into the ground and my arms keeping balance.  If I am really into it sometimes I start swaying in the wind like a real tree.  I totally lose myself in this pose.

All this talk of tree love is to say that yoga is definitely going to be one of my regular exercises now.  I did Jillian Michaels Yoga Meltdown yesterday which was a great workout although not a very traditional yoga class.  I also want to add in other exercise videos though to really burn calories.

Any suggestions on exercise videos to rent or Exercise TV On Demand videos??

Camille is now 7 weeks old and she has changed so much already!  I remember when my childhood cat, Kitty, was a kitten she was so adorable my friend’s little sister told me to only feed her carrots so maybe she wouldn’t get any bigger.  I sometimes feel the same way about my baby.  I want her to stay tiny and it makes me anxious when she grows out of an outfit (which so far has only happened once) or when I weigh her and realize she is almost 10 pounds already!

On the other hand, as she gets older there are other changes, like smiles.  These smiles are practically impossible to catch on camera but I swear, she does it all the time!  At her one month appointment the pediatrician pointed out that she was more alert now and I said that I had seen her smile while she was awake.  The doctor looked at me like I was crazy and very condescendingly  said that these smiles were “non-responsive” and she would not have a responsive smile until 6-8 weeks.  I told her that the smile was cute whether it was responsive or not (and secretly thought to myself that she was actually very advanced and was actually having responsive smiles already.  I mean, I look at her, smile, and then she smiles.  How is that not responsive?).  Anyway, now that she is 7 weeks she is definitely giving us smiles and they are extremely cute.

Now the update on me.  I am very jealous of Camille right now because while she is getting cuter, my body is falling apart.  For some reason I actually believed that I would lose the baby weight very quickly.  I have never lost weight easily so I don’t know why I thought it would work this time but it probably had something to do with all those people who said breastfeeding made you lose weight (liars!).  I gained about 30 pounds during pregnancy and when I got home from the hospital I literally had only lost the 6 pounds that Camille weighed!  After 2 weeks I was down 15 pounds and I have pretty much stayed there since.  Other fabulous body changes have been some ugly stretch marks on my stomach, horribly dry skin, weird bumps on my upper arms, dark circles under my eyes, National Geographic boobs, and back fat.   Yes, I try to avoid all mirrors if possible.  Last week I started counting calories to try to get my portions back in control and I started the 30 Day Shred (ouch) so hopefully I will see some results.

I am trying to be patient because it took nine months to put on, blah blah blah, but I get frustrated when I go to my new mothers class and almost all the women seem to already have flat bellies!  They are all very nice women but I kind of want to stab them all in the eye for that.  They also put on makeup even though the class starts at 10 am which means I am lucky if I brush my hair before rolling out of the house at 9:59.  Whatever.

I very rarely drive in Boston for several reasons.  First, I do not really need to go anywhere driving distance because most things are walkable.  Second, usually Frenchie does the driving if we go anywhere because he gets frustrated with my driving and it is just easier that way.  The third reason is that driving in Boston really sucks!

However, on the rare occasion that I do get in the car by myself, I often have a strong feeling of “I am freeeeeee!!!!”  I do not realize that I feel trapped until I start driving and then suddenly the possibilities are endless.  I could go anywhere and do anything.  Just drive and drive without stopping.  Obviously, my first instinct is to go West, because, well, I wouldn’t make it very far East, who wants to go North where it is colder and the South has nothing for me.  More importantly, my current life goal is to make it back to the west coast so when I get in the drivers seat I picture myself driving the 3000 miles and never looking back.

I hope it doesn’t sound like I want to escape my family, because ideally I would like Frenchie and Camille to join me.  But that takes conversations and planning and when I get in that car I just want to go!

I had that feeling last night when I drove to the grocery store by myself.  For multiple reasons, I did not want to go back home, and I felt so light driving the 4 blocks home from the store, quickly scarfing down my Russell Stover Caramel Marshmallow Egg before I got home and was made fun of for my sugar obsession.

But, I am home, and I am in a terrible mood, and all I want to do right now is grab Camille and run for the hills (preferably the West Hills of Portland).  Instead I am stuck in the house, feeling like crap and trying to make it through the day.  In case I brought my two readers down with me, here are some pictures of cuteness to cheer you up.

Thought this would be fun for a Friday.

A. Age: 30

B. Bed Size: Queen, but I dream about having a king.

C. Chore you hate: Matching socks after doing laundry.

D. Dogs: Dogs are cute, but I doubt I will ever have one.  If I did I would get a Bernese Mountain Dog because they are awesome!

E. Essential to start your day: Coffee in any form

F. Favorite color: Green

G. Gold or silver: Both please!

H. Height: 5’6″, unless I am calculating my BMI, then I am 5’7″.  : )

I. Instruments you play: Growing up I played the clarinet and the piano.  I have tried to learn to play the guitar but my hands are really small so it is hard.  I want to learn to play the banjo next!

J.  Job Title: Public interest attorney.  Mom to Camille.  Amateur baker.

K. Kids: 1, almost 4 weeks old.  Camille.  She hates her sponge baths.

L.  Live: In a 1 bedroom in Brookline Village, Massachusetts.  Moving to a 3 bedroom next door in July.  I. Can’t. Wait.

M.  Mom’s Name: Linda

N.  Nicknames: Em, Grenouille

O.  Overnight hospital stays: Once, about 4 weeks ago when I had a baby.  I was so nervous about being in the hospital but it was fine!  Not that I want to do it again anytime soon.

P.  Pet Peeve: Loud chewing.

Q.  Quote from a movie: “Bon appetit!” (said in Julia Child’s voice)

R.  Right or left handed: right

S.  Siblings: One brother.  Yes, he looks like Mark Wahlberg. And he looks like me, so I guess I look like Marky Mark as well?

T:  Time you wake up: Whenever Camille wakes up.  But when I was working, 6:30 AM, but I stay in bed until 7:30AM.

U.  Underwear: yes

V.  Vegetables you dislike: I like all the vegetables I have tried so far although I only like freshly picked tomatoes.  No grocery store tomatoes for me.

W.  What makes you run late: Now Camille makes me late.  Before, the stupid T made me a late A LOT.

X.  X-rays you’ve had: Only on my teeth.

Y.  Yummy food you make: Beef Bourguinon, chocolate toffee cookies, cinnamon rolls with cream cheese glaze and so much more.

Z.  Zoo – favorite animal: Big cats!

3 weeks in and I want to talk about me.  While I was still pregnant I thought A LOT about labor and some about taking care of a baby but I had not considered how I was going to feel after labor.  I knew that the recovery would be tough if I had a c section but for some reason I did not think about the recovery from a vaginal delivery.  Luckily, I heard a lot of advice and words of wisdom from friends, family, nurses and doctors about postpartum but the best three pieces of advice for me were:

1.  You need somebody with you for the first 2 weeks.  If it is not your partner, then your partner should figure out an alternative.  I was lucky enough to have my mom here and I think I would have run screaming without her.

2.  The first week is hard.

3.  Breastfeeding is your full time job.  There should be no expectation that you will have time to do anything else.  No cleaning, no cooking, no errands.

The first week was hard.  I was in pain.  My emotions were all over the place.  And I was tired!  The only thing that got me through was knowing that is was going to get easier.  And it did.  By the end of week 2 I was feeling much better, physically and emotionally.  Week 3 I am still not fully recovered and I still feel like my hormones are a little wacky but it has gotten a lot easier.  I am looking forward to exercising again and I am able to do more every day.  Another surprising thing for me is that I am still the same person.  Just because I had a baby and I am now a mom, it turns out that those are the only things that changed.  Everything else about me is the same, which is good and bad.

My biggest struggle now is that I feel like I should be more productive during the day.  I am still working on thank you cards, paperwork for Camille, posting pictures, make birth announcements and other life projects.  But the days go by really quickly and I seem to be busy enough (see #3 above) and it seems like Camille sleeps a little less each day.  Luckily she is incredibly cute (see below) and I love taking care of her.