These Are the Days of Our Lives

Evelyn had her 4 month checkup today. We were early (SHOCKING) and so we went for coffee (decaf, one sugar). While waiting at the drive-through, this was going on in the backseat:

Adorable sister time that was captured with my phone camera. I lamented this at the time, but the results look almost better than my camera camera. Wow, technology these days.

Hands! And, siblings looking at each other! Precious moments dolls and baby cupids are shouting out to choirs of angels in heaven over this.


I may be a touch hormonal, but good lord the sweetness!


The only sister time in the car that I remember is that of fighting over who didn't have to sit on the hump in the middle. Cars these days, they don't even have a hump anymore. 


What with camera phones and no-hump cars, I can't keep up.

Way Back Machine

A change from baby pictures for a moment. How about the 1980s?

 Our family regularly vacationed in California to visit family. We frequented the Ponderosa Ranch for sarsaparilla, horseback rides, and Hoss Burgers. There was also Lake Tahoe and family in Reno.

This is me and my dad on horseback. That horse liked to scratch his butt on the shrubbery, which was located at the top of a steep precipice. My dad wasn't too comfortable with that, but he thought it was pretty funny.

Here we are again. This time it's my sister (in blue), me, and Uncle Lee (the family we visited). No itchy-butt horses here.

I remember the cars didn't have air conditioning, and we didn't acquire personal music devices for many years. Once we did, it was GREAT. Lots of Depeche Mode and Joy Division was played on my Walkman.

 My sister and I, trying not to look like to kids from small-town Oregon, and looking very much like kids from small-town Oregon.

Usually we spent some time in and around Reno, then we'd drive to Southern California to visit Grandma. The side trip to Reno broke up the monotony of I5. I can't believe we did all that traveling, in our little cars with all our stuff in two weeks.

 I still like to take road trips, but nowadays there is more likely to be a book on cd playing over the air conditioning fan. All fodder for my daughters' blog entries, I'm sure.

A Day

It's a frog-footed pajama kind of day.



I have no idea what THAT means. Or why my pictures have been so blurry lately. But anyway, frog feet!

What the Fuss

As a breastfeeding mom, I have a long list of foods to avoid eating or else they will upset the baby. As the mother of an infant, I have very little time to invest in creating new menus to replace those I have automatically enjoyed for years. Take breakfast, with the restriction of no eggs, peanuts, or dairy. I can replace the milk on my cereal with rice milk, but that leaves my bagel painfully dry, without peanut butter, cream cheese or butter.

Breakfast is annoying but the worst meal of the day by far is dinner, where I must make something amenable to my baby and the rest of the family. Sometimes, I have cereal for dinner. That doesn't cut it for the rest of them, though, who don't like to eat like they're still in college. A dish as simple as pasta becomes inordinately difficult. No marinara, and no alfredo either.

There are websites that list meal plans and recipes for people like me, but often they are for omitting one item or maybe two, not the entire list that is applicable to me. A dairy-free site will tell me to avoid dairy if baby is fussy, but suggest cabbage or broccoli as an alternate calcium source, which also makes my baby fussy. A breastfeeding guide to nutrition cautions me to get plenty of calories, and then merrily suggests getting plenty of calcium from sources like yogurt or broccoli, which we've already established are out of the question.

Restrictions + no time + need for calories = mealtime freak out.

That formula could be the case, but I've decided to remain calm. I've eaten my (cereal with rice milk) breakfast, now it's time to plan for lunch. Yesterday's lettuce sandwich was all right, but isn't enough. I can't keep improvising. I need a plan. I also need a calcium supplement.

No:

eggs
dairy
tomatoes
citrus
peanuts
soy
corn
vegetables like cabbage and broccoli
shellfish
caffeine
carbonated drinks


Evelyn is calm for now.....to the internets!