There's Only One Gear

And that gear is reverse. Lily, at around the same age, started crawling backwards. But she started off slowly. Anna, on the other hand, hit the ground "running." Backwards that is.

I needed to put new sheets on her bed tonight before putting her to sleep, so I put her down on the ground and turned my back for a second. One minute and she was sitting next to my feet. The next minute she was in Lily's room. And back again. Soon she'd gotten herself stuck underneath her swing. I couldn't believe my eyes. It did help that she was in her PJs and our floors are hard wood -- it was a nice slick surface.

Boy can she move!


And, apparently, move from sitting to tummy. She almost made it from tummy back to sitting.

So just for good measure, her crib was lowered to the middle height before I put the newly sheeted mattress back on the bed.

I'm not sure that I'm ready for her to be hitting these milestones so quickly in a row. Then again, no one asked me. One thing is for certain, it's the girls under four feet tall who rule the roost in our house!

Our trip to The Mall. The National Mall.

While most people were out hitting their local shopping malls, trolling for deals, we hit the National Mall in search of a little post-Thanksgiving family outing. We almost had to bail. Traffic was HORRENDOUS as soon as we got close. And just as we broke free of the traffic I spied a parking space, located on a one way street, that I swore to Noah was a "dream spot!!" It turned out to be a permit spot. And since we had turned on to that one way street to get to the DREAM. SPOT. we had to retrace our steps. Back in to the traffic. I think that the makers of Excedrin had a spy-cam in our car, because just as we hit the traffic, for the second time, Lily started to whine that she was bored. And had to pee. And, to add to the chorus, Anna started to cry.

But we didn't bail. We kept going. And we found another dream spot. This time a real one. Right in front of the Sculpture Garden. So we stopped there for a mediocre, but expensive, lunch. OK, it was pretty bad. But with the fountain converted to a skating rink for the winter, at least the ambiance was fantastic!

We then went to see the Sant Ocean Hall at the Natural History Museum; our real destination. I have colleagues who worked on the grand opening of this exhibit, so I've been hearing about how awesome the exhibit is going on two months now. It IS awesome. Totally awesome. But also, perhaps, a bit too awesome for a four year old. Although Lily loved seeing all the fish -- she even found "Nemo" in one of the live tanks -- I think that we'll have to wait another year before she'll really be able to "get it."


So to finish out our adventure on a high note, we hit the National Carousel. And it was a huge hit with Lily. Even though she's ridden on approximately one thousand other carousels, riding up and down around in a circle always makes her smile.


Anna and I watched from the sidelines. We watched Lily and Noah on the ride, and we watched from afar the grand stand being built for THE. GRAND. OCCASION. The one that had workmen out on November 29th even though it's not happening until January 20th. THE SWEARING IN of President Barack H. Obama.


And as busy as the Mall appeared today, it's nothing compared to the sea of people that'll brave below freezing weather to witness that moment in history.

If you stretch your eyes, you can see the structure being built just to the left of center, no pun intended, of the Capitol.

I'm looking forward to seeing the 1.20.09 photos from space. I'd bet money that the crowd of people between the Capitol and the Washington Monument actually shows up on pictures taken from satellites!

Thankful

There is so very much to be thankful this year, and I've finally had a chance to catch my breath from the holiday. Which, of course, only happened because I actually unbuttoned my pants. Ah, dieting...two steps forward, one step back!

My list of things for which I give thanks is a long one. Here's the top 10.

1. My Uncle Lake's health. One week before Thanksgiving we got a terrible scare in our family. The "C" word. Lung cancer to be exact. But on Tuesday the biopsy results came back and, amazingly, it's a fungus. Not cancer. I can't tell you how thankful we all are for this news!
2. My two amazing children. My life is forever better because of those two girls. And, hopefully, we are enriching their lives just as much as they're giving to ours.
   
3. My incredibly understanding and forever patient husband. Since I routinely fall asleep on the couch long before 10 p.m...and when I'm awake I'm often a raging bundle of hormones (I have found that post-partum PMS lasts almost the entire month and is 10 worse than it was before I had kids)...poor Noah is taking one for the team right now. I am VERY grateful for his patience and sense of humor!
4. Family. In my family we claim just about anyone as a "cousin." But that's because we've got so many awesome people in the family that we want to lay claim to them all.
   
5. Friends. Old friends. New friends. Mommy friends. Work friends. Parents of Lily's friends. Our lives are rich with friendship.
   
6. My job. Although I do complain...a lot at times...I am grateful that, in this tough economy, I still have a job. That in my own little way I am able to contribute to society. And that I am setting a good example for my girls.
   
7. Noah's job. Considering he works for a certain GSE company that is routinely mentioned in current Congressional hearings, on C-SPAN and CNN...we are lucky, indeed, that Noah still has a job. And, at least for the time being, it's a secure job.
8. The Nation's Capitol. I LOVE that we live a stone's throw away from the White House, the Capitol, and all the sights and culture that this grand city has to offer. Noah and I sometimes fantasize about "the simple life," trading it all in for a MUCH larger and nicer house at a fraction of our mortgage...in an area that's just a bit slower and, perhaps, even friendlier. But we always come to the same conclusion. Can't do it. This city is far too rich in experiences for us to move away. Free babysitters certainly help to sweeten the deal! Nope...this is the place we want to raise our girls.
9. CHEAP GAS! You can actually buy regular gasoline around us for less than $2 a gallon. I can't remember the last time I saw numbers like that at the pump! You might recall, but during our family vacation to Vermont this past summer, we paid something to the tune of $4.35 a gallon.
10. Pumpkin bread pudding. I'll soon post the recipe that I used for the dessert we brought to both of our Thanksgiving dinners. It was awesome. Totally deserving of its own post. I refuse to weigh myself now, but it was worth gaining an extra pound or two for! IT. WAS. SO. GOOD.
    

She's on the move (sort of)!

Leave it to Anna to come up with a completely unique way of moving. She's not crawling on her hands and knees. She's not shimmying on her belly. She's scooting. On her tush. But she's actually getting places. Slowly. V-E-R-Y slowly. Which is the perfect speed in my book!



Yes, my baby is on the move. Which, I guess, means that she's less and less of a baby each day. She sits up at the table with us. She eats cheerios. She's got two teeth. She laughs at Lily's jokes. She's already developed a love for Barbies. And, of course, if she spies something across the room, she's figured out a way to go get it.

But her little head still fits in the crook of my neck, and I can still quiet her cries almost instantly with my hugs. So even though her legs fall over the arm rest of the glider when I rock her at night, I'm happy to say that she's still my baby! At least for the time being.

Girlfriends

On of Lily's best, best friends recently transferred from the Huck to Children's House Montessori. She, like Lily, has a November birthday and will be almost six when she starts kindergarten. Her family recently moved to Arlington, her older sister is in elementary school near CHMS, and her mother (a former Montessori student herself) was thrilled that this option was available so close to home. While they originally applied for admission next fall, a classmate of Lily's recently moved to NJ and KATY GOT HER SPOT!

These girls couldn't be cuter together. It's ridiculous. Katy and Lily have been in school together since they were four months old. And it shows. They learned to crawl together. To walk together. To eat together. And they learned to get in to trouble together. Yes, these girls can be trouble. It was with Katy that Lily decided to ditch her teachers, and her class, and take a tour of DuPont Circle near Downtown DC. When they were two. Luckily they didn't get but a few feet past the gate to the park. But those few feet cost me a few years off my lifespan I'm sure.

Since Noah was still in Boston and I needed a diversion, we joined Katy's family at a local Mexican cantina for dinner Friday night. It was there that Katy's older sister, Sophia, presented Lily with a card that she'd made.

I mean...I wanted to kiss her myself. And frame it.

Lily, who is in the tulip room at CHMS, and Katy, a CHMS sunflower, have the appropriate "headdresses" in the drawing. A detail that it took me a second to notice.

"FRUM" -- I nearly died when I saw this. I LLOOOVVVEEE the phonetic spelling. As a graduate of a Seven Sister women's college, I also love the fact that my four year old daughter already has such a close "sister."

CHECK IT and save some dough!

What you may or may not know (I didn't), is that many retailers offer a kickback to websites that send happy shoppers their way. Yup, they're getting a commission on the money that you spend.

What I recently discovered is that there is one virtual mall, stocked with over 900 retailers, that will share the kickback with you. Win-win!

CHECK OUT http://www.ebates.com/. It's awesome. Totally rocks. I haven't found a store yet that they haven't had. And you can ask both Noah and American Express...I do ALL my shopping online. With two kids, packed parking lots and busy shopping malls, it's the only way that I can stand to make my purchases.

Register, for free, at ebates.com. Use me as a referral when you sign up (supreme_courtney@yahoo.com or Courtney Fox) and we both profit -- $5 in each of our ebates account. Then start shopping.

By clicking through to online retailers through your ebates account, you can get up to 26% of your total purchase back, although truth be told my purchases to date have been more in the 3-4% range. Still, it's money. Cold hard cash. Bonus -- Ebates is also always on the look out for coupon codes, which are posted to the site too. You get a BFC (Big Fat Check) mailed to you up to four times a year. Or, if you're feeling generous and the economic downturn hasn't pinched you too hard, you can donate the money to a charity of your choice!

Of course, ALWAYS do your own searches for promotional codes when shopping online. Naughty Codes is a great site, but there are literally a zillion to chose from. I usually just Google "promotional code for XXX" (xxx being, of course, whatever store I'm shopping from) before I make any online purchase. And I have never come up empty. I ALWAYS find some sort of discount, even if it's just free shipping. Except for Hanna Andersson. Those Swedes don't like to cut us a break.

Are you a Motrin Mommy?

It's always fun when it's actually appropriate for me to don my mommy hat at the office. During business hours. Even better when it's a "mommy blogger" hat.

So imagine my delight when, throughout the week, during the like two nano-seconds I've had to breathe, I've been able to follow the "Motrin Migraine" story. And while I can't bill the time against a client code, it certainly counts as work. It's my business after all.

Have you not heard?

It's started on twitter on Friday.

Spread to the blogs over the weekend.

Then it hit Madison Avenue on Monday.

From wire articles to Ad Age to blogs right and left of center, this is the talk of the internet.

So for those people who think that blogging is not serious stuff, go talk to the execs at Motrin. Better yet, talk to their ad firm (likely to soon be FORMER ad firm). First watch the not-so-brilliant-and-completely-patronizing ad that has, apparently, been running since the end of September.

This isn't the first piece of marketing material that has targeted moms and referred to their babies...our babies...as accessories. I actually saw a PR pitch about 6 months ago, issued on behalf of trendy Phil & Ted's. You know, the cool double-decker stroller company. While they were talking about "toting" children around, they may as well have been pitching a hot new handbag. It amazes me that people think this kind of outreach might actually fly. Just because we have mommy brains doesn't mean that they're completely useless!

So the online mommy mafia was in an uproar over this Motrin ad. Bans and boycotts were called for. Tweets abounded. If you Google the words "Motrin" and "headache," most of the results talk about this ad debacle, not the painkiller. It's an online phenomenon.

End result -- Motrin has pulled the ad, issued an apology, and will no longer overlook, nor underestimate, the clout of mommy bloggers. Perhaps they'll also do a bit more research in to their target audience before launching any new creative campaigns.

That mommies united over one issue and effected change -- major change within a company -- over the course of one weekend is testament to their power and to the effectiveness of this thing we call social media. Whether it's someone as visible (and crazy amazing) as my blogger idol Heather Armstrong, or someone like me who gets a few dozen hits a day, people are out there and listening. I am woman, hear me roar. Amazing!

And shame on you J&J.

Single Parent

I must give MAJOR props to all those single parents out there. I have NO. IDEA. how you do it! None.

My day today started at 6:15 a.m. Rather than play a volley with my snooze button, hitting it several times before actually dragging myself out of bed, I got up with the first obnoxious buzz (I had to switch from music to buzzer because I was regularly sleeping through it). The next hour and 50 minutes is somewhat of a blur, but I know that I got up/showered/dressed, I got both girls up fed/dressed/bundled up in winter gear, the coffee did get made, the bottles did make it out of the fridge and in to the car, and we actually made it out of the house by 8:05.

There was, of course, way more negotiating with Lily to get up/eat/get dressed/put her coat on than I'll ever admit. I did loose my cool once or twice. She did cry, declaring that she wasn't happy with me "not one little bit" and that she missed DDDAAAADDDDDDYYYYYY. (Me too kiddo!)

I got both kids to school on time, essentially, and arrived at my office before I was noticeably late. Since I'm currently working on a client press announcement (stay tuned for breaking news on Monday), my day FLEW by. Before I knew it it was a few minutes after 5, and I was technically late to start the evening child retrieval process.

Anna was happy to see me, the traffic gods were on my side tonight, and I got Lily with 12 minutes to spare. Just as I was contemplating what to fix for dinner, though, my Outlook reminder went off, alerting me to the fact that we're on the hook to bring birthday snack for Lily's class tomorrow. No nuts. No chocolate. No frosting. (No fun!) Dinner would have to wait...we were on our way to Harris Teeter for the ingredients.

I'll spare you all the details of the next hour or two, lest you be forced to relive my pain. In short, Lily chose banana muffins for tomorrow's snack, so we snagged the groceries and zipped home for a quick dinner (it's 10 p.m. though and I have yet to eat mine) pre-baking. Pleased with myself for some uber multi-tasking, I got Lily situated with her meal and a movie while I fed/bathed/bedded Anna. Once I resurfaced from Anna's room, though, I realized we were missing 4 eggs needed for the recipe. Great.

Perhaps you can see where this is headed. Sadly. I packed a sleeping baby up in her carseat, threw PJs and sneakers on Lily, and back to the grocery store we all went to purchase those pesky eggs (I still can't believe that we didn't have them in the fridge...we ALWAYS have eggs in the fridge!). BTW, call me a terrible/horrible/negligent parent, but for about ten seconds I actually considered putting the kids to bed and THEN sneaking out, quickly, to the grocery store 3 blocks away. Thankfully, it was only a fleeting thought.

We got home 20 minutes later, and I redeposited Anna in her bed while shuffling Lily off for a bath of her own. OK, the night was back on track. Or so I thought. I breathed a sigh of relief.

But just as I was getting Lily out of the tub, I heard an all too familiar cough coming from Anna's room. The cough that made her spit up last night...which required a late night sheet change, of course. I dashed in to Anna's room, picked her up and started walking around to lull her back to sleep. But then it happened. MAJOR projectile vomiting all over me. All over her. All over my bedroom rug. Yup, all over the hardwood floor in the hall. And everywhere in between.

By 9:30 I was able to get Anna cleaned up and put back to bed. The mess cleaned up. Lily -- 'til then frozen in place so horrified by what she saw -- to bed too.

Of course, the muffins weren't going to make themselves, so in the 45 minutes since then I whipped up two dozen delicious smelling (sadly very homemade looking) banana muffins. With sprinkles on top. Because even though they frown upon sugar at school, I can only ratchet down the fun by so much.


And now it's 10:15. I'm about to eat dinner. And then I will go apologize to my TiVo for breaking our date that I was SO looking forward to tonight. From a Discovery Health show about polygamy, to a BBC America documentary about legalizing marijuana, to Criminal Minds, ER and Little People Big World...I've got some serious TV watching that I need to do. But not tonight. Because the bottles for tomorrow still need to be made, the laundry needs to be switched from washer to dryer (remnants from the vomit incident), the muffins need to be packed up, clothes need to be laid out, and a few of the 2,564,892 toys that currently litter my living room floor need to be put away. And there's no one here but yours truly to get it all done.

How in the world do single parents do it? I'm 27 hours in to my single parenthood experience, and I'm already counting down until Friday night when Noah returns! TGIF will have a whole new meaning this week. N -- we miss you!!

So f-ing tired

I can't believe that it's been almost a week since my last posting. For those of you who wonder how I do it all -- work full time, parent two delicious but demanding children full time, and blog -- this just proves that I'm far from being a super mommy blogger. If I were I would have managed to survive the insanity of our lives AND pontificate about them online. But I'm not. In fact, I barely lived to tell the tale.

To recap, in the past week we...

...started a diet (me) and while I've started to see results (3 pounds!) my mood has become more annoying, though, with each lost pound. Perhaps you can't buy happiness, but I think that ice cream and bagels can get you pretty darn close to it!

...went to NJ to visit my bedrest-ridden friend, Jamie, who is close to delivering her twin girls AND managed to sneak in a visit to our favorite former neighbors who now live 20 minutes from Jamie.

...made TWO trips to the pediatrician. One for a sick visit where I discovered that Lily's 6 week old bronchitis had turned in to a raging ear infection. One for a "well" visit where I discovered that Anna was, apparently, recovering from croup and too sick to get her flu booster and polio shot...and that Lily was fully in the 75th percentile for both height and weight amongst four year old girls. Oh, right, and her hearing is great (check!) and vision is perfect (check, check!!).

...delivered one MAJOR client presentation (me), which was well received. I was able to create, memorize and deliver my slides without embarrassing myself or the firm. I might have even gotten a small smile from my boss after I concluded.

...nearly did an all-nighter, my first one in a LONG time, preparing for said presentation and other client work due the same day.

...decorated (Lily) and wrote out (me) some 18 thank you notes for birthday presents. Amazingly we're not done yet. I'm hoping that like with the year-long grace period you get for wedding presents, the same is true for four year old birthday thank you notes.

...packed up (Noah) and left for the Green Building Council's convention in Boston. Noah will be gone for the next three days and, god willing, the girls and I will survive on our own until his return.

...managed to work out Lily's social calendar, which I'm convinced is far more complicated than even President-Elect Obama's. Today's great challenge was figuring out how we can make it to 5 birthday parties (she was invited to 6 but sadly we had to turn down the last one because it directly conflicts with the time of the ballet) , 1 Nutcracker Ballet, 1 pilates class, 1 dinner outing....and a partridge in a pear tree....during the first weekend in December. And, oh right, Noah will be out of town that weekend.

...survived a fire drill drama at one daycare center than shall remain nameless. I can't get in to the details as I'm still too fired up. No kids were harmed, thankfully, but in the haste to get them outside all coats were left inside (thankfully my roving sources around the city spotted this and alert me). Which wouldn't be a problem if we lived in Miami, but it snowed today in DC. Well it flurried today (is that a word?), but I'm feeling pissed off and dramatic so I'll stretch that one to "snowed." But I finally stopped spitting fire about 15 minutes ago. The situation has been addressed and is being rectified. I've got to let this one go!

So my apologies for not posting an entry over the past week, but my energy and creative juices are gone. They officially left the building, and in their wake I discovered a whole clump of new gray hairs. I do promise, though, to crack open the new case of Diet Cokes I just discovered in the mud room and opine for you all in the coming days. I've missed you!

¿Hablas español?

Well, do you? Sadly I don't. Speak Spanish. But I got a nice email from the Univision reporter who included me in her article about breastmilk and baking. The article is done and live on the site! Click here to check it out.

In fact, the reporter wrapped up the lengthy article with my quote:

Courtney Fox es una profesional, residente en Arlington y madre de dos hijas a quienes ha amamantado. "Aunque estoy a favor de darles pecho a mis bebés, la idea (ceder su leche a adultos) me asusta y la encuentro completamenteimproductiva. Pregúntenle a cualquiera que haya amamantado, especialmente si trabajan fuera de casa y les dirán que apenas pueden cumplir con la demanda".

The irony is that the article was published just as I started to wean Anna. Not that the weaning was premeditated. In fact, quite to the contrary, I had every intention of nursing her for at least as long as I nursed Lily. But Anna doesn't seem all that interested in me anymore. And my supply doesn't seem all that interested in sticking around anymore. So it just sort of started happening. The weaning that is.

I'm certainly torn over this one. I feel that what I provided for one child I should certainly provide for the other. And while the American Academy of Pediatrics does recommend mother's milk for at least 12 months, the reality is that most babies get far, far less than that. My pediatrician told me that everything beyond 4 months of age is gravy...so perhaps I should take comfort in the fact that I gave Anna a good 3 months worth of the proverbial icing on the cake.

But, of course, we mothers are fantastic when it comes to guilt trips. And self-punishment. So, for the time being, Anna and I are maintaining our morning nursing sessions. Although what, if anything, she's getting is likely negligible. But I just can't quite let it go. Yet.

Hopefully the day won't come when, in a fit of sibling sparring, Lily turns to Anna and declares that I loved her more because she got 2 extra months at the breast. If it does, it'll just get added to the long list of things that I'm sure Noah and I do, knowingly or not, to screw our kids up. Add those counselling session bills to my tab!

Secretly, I'm looking forward to returning to my non-nursing bras. Not that these 1950's style milk machine slings aren't sexy. I mean, they do have front AND rear entry available. What's not sexy about that!?!