Negativity Fail

Well, that sucked.

I did not enjoy Negative Week. It made me sad and stressed and feel badly about myself.

I partially wrote and discarded or thought about posts on my inability to follow through on weight loss goals, my loss of things that I'm passionate about, the frustration and worry about aging loved ones, and more than one big issue that I can't resolve. All this exercise did was stress me the fuck out.

So it isn't worth it. I am genuine in the enthusiasm and happiness that I give off here. It may not be the whole picture it is a true piece. And a valuable one too.

I may share about some of the things above but all of those topics don't minimize the best parts of life.

I didn't do well focusing on negativity and I wound up sick at the end of it (cold probably not blog induced I realize). So with that, Negative Week is over. This space isn't reserved for only happiness and sunshine but writing about that makes me even happier so it may skew in that direction.


So with that. Here is an appropriate song to sign off with.

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Fraidy Cat

One definite trend I notice in myself as I age is how damn afraid I am now. I don’t mean that I used to be bungee-jump-naked-while drunk-with strangers-in Columbia fearless. I wasn’t, my personality is just generally cautious but I never felt as consistently sick to my stomach about my own or my loved one’s safety as I do now. And I hate it.

I used to love tragic books about disease and loss. Did anyone else devour Lurlene McDaniel books as a tween? I vividly remember tears streaming down my face as I secretly stayed up late with a flashlight to finish one. Now they are akin to horror movies to me- still a sliver of enjoyment but also beyond terrifying. I just finished “Still Alice” by Lisa Genova. It was a perfect fit for me, science-y and tragic. But it terrified me out of my wits. It is like I used to be able to empathize with the characters without being crushed by the weight of their experience…I can’t really any more. I have had Joan Didion’s “Year of Magical Thinking” in my audible cart for a while but the sudden loss of a husband and child fills me with so much dread I can’t pull the trigger.






In case the title isn't clear this book is about a baby named Alicia dying.

I used to just not enjoy violence in movies (even magical violence) but now it makes me physically uncomfortable. I was so disgusted during almost all of the most recent Superman movie and more and more I can’t overlook destruction of a whole city (fictional or non) as merely the climactic battle scene. Logically I know it’s ridiculous but I can’t stop myself from feeling emotional about it.

I did however love historical war movies and watching people endure and I loved to admire how brave they were. Now I run through my head how much of a coward I think I would be/ would have been if I were faced with some of these dilemmas. How I’m just not sure that I could sacrifice myself or my family for something. How I’m not sure I could/ would have survived the losses.

I think part of it is age and part of it is the newness of having my own family and being protective of my little nest.
The problem is, I’m not ready to only read about sunshine (cancer) and butterflies (mass extinctions and global warming). I still do like to hear firsthand experiences of people who have endured and I still want to know what is going on in the world and I still want to be fun for my hubby and watch wizards battle robots (or whatever). My goal isn’t to shield myself from scary things but I need to figure out how to feel less scared of them personall


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I am a Hater

I’ll start this week off with this nugget. I am SO SICK of Seahawks mania. And I know, this makes me a total hater. This problem is multifaceted.
1. I do not understand sports spectating. I enjoy watching some sports. I do. I love a gymnastics meet (maybe not a JV one). But I completely don’t understand the transmutation that sports fans undergo where they feel like they went from being a completely uninvolved spectator to an actual team member. When I watch sports I admire the athlete but I would never say, did you see how WE nailed that triple Lutz? It irks me, probably more than it should but it is further exacerbated by Seattle’s 12th Man. The whole premise of this is based on the idea that sitting on my ass eating Doritos makes me part of the team.

2. It makes me feel like an outsider and homesick and sort of displaced. I’m not sure why, as you see above, I didn’t root-root-root for my home team either. But there is something about all of this hoopla that worries me that I will never be at home here. I don’t know how to feel at home. Is it something I need to force myself into or work my way towards or is it supposed to just happen at some point?

I felt like a complete moron chanting –HAWKS at my Zumba class. I will try not to be a complete hater but it may take being visited by ghosts of Games Past (maybe HS days when I was so sopping in school spirit that I left a trail behind me) and Games Future (I imagine there will be sports of some sort that my baby or some of the Niblings will partake in) to get me to get the spirit in my heart.

All that being said, we tuned in to the game at 4th quarter yesterday and, hater or not, that was some exciting stuff. I am still laughing at the people who bought $500 tickets and left before the end of 4Q. What do you bet they made a pact in the car to never tell ANYONE they left early?


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Negative Week

One of my loyal readers commented that I have been too positive on this blog (she's going to be so mad at me for misrepresenting her comments here). So I am deeming this coming week Negative Week.

That being said, I can't promise to be wholly negative. Even really irritating and worrisome things are very easily put into perspective in my life right now. I have never been as acutely aware of how lucky I am to be where I am, to be with the people in my life and for so many big and small blessings* I get every day.

None the less, I do have things to bitch about. So negativity commence!

For example:
It is very annoying that my cute baby moves to fast to be captured in photos.






Alright, I'll dig deeper than that.



*this is a fraught word for me but I can never think of a better one, suggestions

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Literally Magic

My HUGE readership will be shocked by this but I don’t have any blog sponsors. Which is why you can take this product endorsement with good faith, knowing how much I love the product.






I think Trader Joe’s full fat plain greek yogurt is the stuff of the gods. It has gotten to the point that I have sort of elevated in my head into the magical territory.

It came into our lives when I was really sick last winter and had been for a while and my doctor finally cut loose with some antibiotics. I was thrilled for me but wondered to Andrew’s pediatrician whether it would do a number on his flora and I had a huge fear of yeast. She wasn’t too concerned but, probably to quiet me, said that he could take a probiotic or we could try yogurt on him. He was only 7-8 months old but her rationale was that it was cultured dairy, so lower in lactose, and since he had never had any reaction to anything in my diet, she wasn’t worried.

At this point, his solid ingestion could be measured in molecules so we figured he could spit out yogurt if he wanted- at least introduce good bacteria into his mouth. He liked it slightly more than other foods but he didn’t really eat much but my love affair with it began then. I used it to thicken up runny baby foods or cool down something that had been over heated. I liked that it was a nutritional gold mine, protein, vitamins and minerals, high in fat. I also, probably wrongly, began to correlate his lovely digestive health (regular, loose-yet- well-formed bowel movements) to his yogurt consumption and still give it a lot of credit to date.

It was a perfect nutritional addition to sweet or savory foods. Sweet potato with greek yogurt is like a tater and sour cream and blueberry and greek yogurt is like a cheesecake (well…). We started using it as sour cream for our taco night and the first solids I sent to daycare with A was black beans and yogurt. As he began to eat more of what we were eating we found we could use it to moderate spice level, for example adding it to spicy lettuce wrap mix to cool it down.

We get all sorts of comments at Grandma’s and at restaurants on how good A is with utensils. We started giving him his own bowl and spoon while he was being spoon-fed pretty early and yogurt was an awesome practice medium. The high viscosity gave him more time to figure out how to get it to his mouth. He can eat cereal in milk with a spoon now and that is because he graduated through eating cereal in yogurt and then over time thinning out the yogurt with milk.

This guy is hungrier these days than he was a s a newborn (probably not really) so having quick snacks is an imperitive. Yogurt is an awesome dip!





Pretzels, pea pods, etc. I feel better about the snack, it is more filling than the carb by itself and it slows him down a bit until we can figure out what to actually eat.
I seriously LOVE this stuff now. I could actually gush more; it is cheap, less tart than some of the mainstream brands and so so creamy.

The only downside here is that now I am snobbish to my 2 WW pt yoplaits. But for my baby’s healthy and full tummy (and my own saiety) I can probably live with that.







That is actually whipped cream. Also highly viscous, much less nutritious, but oh so delicious.





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Few words week

I had the BEST week ever. It was exactly what I needed/wanted and the only improvement (bar one instance of being neglectful of my aunt) would have been a few more days.

Playing in the rain


Christmas Eve


Christmas





Our best day of geocaching ever in issaquah.


More presents (I think this is when it all clicked for him and he was all over his new toys)


Duplo-mania!


First haircut


Looking sharp


Day trip to portland and a visit to the first cache.


Dinner date


Andrew had a sleepover at grandmas while we had a project day at home.


Happy new year 2015!


New Years fancy dinner


Baby visits (and their parents)



Not pictured:
Cousin bonding
100th geocache for team Drives with Eagles.
Insane asylum (aka Indoor play center) in Portland.
Volunteering at Open Kitchen.
Lazy time in pjs.

I am so so so grateful for this week. I won't say it has me eager and ready for the year and its routine to start again. But it has me so appreciative of the life I have and ready to work hard to keep making it a reality.

Happy New Years!

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