You are here: Home / Archives for Musings

Just one of those days

April 2, 2012 By

Today was one of those days that just didn’t go quite as planned. I wouldn’t call it a bad day because a lot of good things happened, but there were definitely a few bumps in the road!

Bump 1: Nursing Issues

This may totally be TMI, so if you don’t care to read about my nursing issues, feel free to skip down to Bump 2. Yes, I’m still nursing. I’m very proud that I made it to 1 year! I didn’t even know if I’d be able to nurse the boys at all, so the fact that I’ve nursed them 1 whole year is pretty exciting for me. We’re down to three sessions a day, first thing in the morning, 3:00 or so in the afternoon, and right before bed. I’ve been lamenting the fact that I’m going to start weaning them soon, but Miles has started to wean himself…by biting. Ouch. I’ve done all the things I’ve read to do to counteract this, and he’s still doing it. Subsequently, today, he skipped both his afternoon and evening nursing sessions (my little chunk, Ollie, however, shows no signs of giving up). I know that Miles is still getting plenty of calories, so I’m not worried about him, but I just wasn’t quite ready for him to move on yet! Oh well…the kid is independent, what can I say?

Bump 2: Open Flames

I invited a couple over tonight who just moved to Japan. Because they were to arrive right after the boys went down for the night, I decided to make a chicken with veggies in the crock pot (my go-to company meal these days) and make some bread in my bread machine–then it would all be done right when they arrived. Genius right? Well, I had just started the crock pot  and the bread machine and put some squash on the stove to steam for the boys’ dinner. I went in the living room for just  a second and I thought I smelled something burning. I thought to myself–crock pot? no. bread machine? no. squash? no…I just put it on. But there was DEFINITELY a burning smell, so I went back into the kitchen to investigate. And saw this potholder in flames on the stove! Ack!

When I thought I had turned on the back burner where the pot of squash was, I had accidentally turned on the front burner. Oops. And guess what was sitting on the front burner? Lucking I easily smothered the fire and not even a smoke alarm went off (which now that I think about it kind of concerns me, because there was quite a bit of smoke–maybe I should investigate that tomorrow…).

Bump 3: Nearly Causing My Child to Choke

In the evenings as I sweep up after the boys’ dinner, I let them crawl around the kitchen. Tonight, I noticed Miles was being very quiet–which as you moms know, usually means trouble. I look over and see that he is sitting there sucking on a little candy egg. I keep a dish of  these candy eggs on my side table in the living room, and when I was opening the bag yesterday it spilled…

I thought I had cleaned up all of them, but apparently I hadn’t! And they are the perfect choking hazard size–and are pretty hard. Luckily, he was fine, but by the amount of color already gone from the candy shell, it looked as though it had been in his mouth for 30 seconds or so–made me feel like a stellar mom!

Bump 4: Dinner

Finally the boys were in bed, the couple had arrived, and I was ready to serve dinner. As I said before, I had timed it so that  everything would be done right around 7:0opm, when I had told them to come over. Well, 7:00pm came, and the whole chicken in the crock pot didn’t look quite done. I have made a whole chicken 4 or 5 times since I’ve moved to Japan, but I always get 3 pound chickens…this was a 5 pound chicken and of course I knew it would take longer, but it is taking a LOT longer. I saw is (not *WAS*) because it is 10:20 as I type this and that darn chicken is STILL not done! Seriously… No, the couple is not still here waiting for me to feed them. Luckily, I had made a huge salad with lots of goodies (including some nuts for protein!) and I had that loaf of freshly baked bread, so there was plenty of food to just have salads and bread for dinner and then yummy peanut butter brownies for dessert. I do want the chicken to be done soon though, because I need to go to sleep!

And that, folks, was my day…and why I may be up cooking a whole chicken in the middle of the night!

1 Comment Filed Under: Musings

One mom, two babies, three hours, 30,000 feet

December 4, 2011 By

It was bound to happen. I wanted to leave California to go to Missouri to see my family. With my babies. Have a mentioned that my husband is gone right now?

Thank goodness, we flew on a direct flight there and back, and actually, everything went VERY smoothly. I was prepared for four hours of H-E-double hockey sticks. But thankfully, the boys were GREAT. For all you fellow moms of twins traveling with kiddos alone (or moms of one baby traveling alone…or dads of triplets traveling alone…or an aunt traveling with a niece…or a nephew…well you get the picture), I’ve assembled a few things I learned on my trip.

1. If at all possible book a direct flight. This was our lifesaver. One flight there. One flight back. Enough said.

2. The easiest part. Initially the thing I was most worried about was how I was going to get all my cr*p from my car to the airport. Honestly…this was probably the easiest part! I took the following:

-1 rolling bag for me
-1 small duffle bag for the boys
-1 messenger-style diaper bag
-1 double stroller
-1 car seat inside a carseat bag with backpack straps (we borrowed a second car seat from my best friend in Missouri)

We parked at a garage with an airport shuttle. The shuttle picked us up at my car. And the doors of the shuttle bus were wide enough so that the shuttle driver and I could just lift the stroller right onto the shuttle without taking the boys out or collapsing the stroller (SCORE!). Once we were dropped off at the airport I used one hand to push the stroller with the diaper bag on the handles, one hand to pull my bag with the duffle on top of it, and carried the carseat on my back. Once we checked in, I got rid of my bags and the boys duffle, so the stroller/diaper bag/carseat were all very manageable. I’m pretty sure we did look pretty funny though walking though the airport–I got some strange looks! (If we hadn’t had access to a second carseat in MO we would have obviously had to take that, too, and we just would have checked that with our luggage).

3. The hardest part. The hardest part was not getting through security (luckily I had a friend on the way to MO and my dad on the way back to CA who could go through security with me…but even without them, it wouldn’t have been too bad…the TSA folks are surprisingly helpful!). The hardest part was getting from the end of the jetway onto the airplane. I purposely flew Southwest so that that the person sitting next to me would choose that spot and not be stuck there because of a seat assignment (if you haven’t figured it out already I bought two seats…so one baby sat in the carseat and I held the other). Southwest’s family boarding policy says that Group A boards first (I couldn’t check in online because the boys’ DOB’s weren’t in the Southwest database) and THEN families. Of course all the people in Group A take the empty seats in the first 3/4 of the plane, so we had to go all the way to the back to find empty rows. Ick. Sooooo…the trip from the end of the jetway to sitting down in our seats went something like this:

-Push stroller down jetway.
-Arrive at end of jetway and move out of the way of other families boarding (families which all seemed to be made up of two parents and one baby…I’ve never been so envious of that ratio!).
-Take diaper bag off handlebars, get out baby bjorn.
-Take carseat out of carseat bag.
-Put on baby bjorn and load baby (whichever is fussing/antsy).
-At this point there are many people staring at me as they file on the plane and thankfully on each flight someone offered to help. I ask them to hold the other baby.
-I ask a flight attendant to take the carseat on the plane and find an empty row.
-The gate check guy asks what he can do at this point. I fold up the stroller (really easy with our Baby Jogger), hand him some bungie cords, and show him how to secure it.
-With the stranger holding a baby following me, I file on the plane carrying a baby, the carseat bag and the diaper bag trying not to hit those Group A people sitting in the front of the plane (I may be scowling at them a little at this point, too).
-I find the carseat, throw the carseat bag in the overhead bin, strap the carseat in, take the baby from the stranger and strap him (the baby not the stranger) into the carseat.
-Take a deep breath!
-Get nursing cover, bottle for baby in carseat, toys, pacifiers, etc. ready to go.
-Pray someone nice sits next to us (which happened both times).

4. Bribe the people around you. Before traveling I made little gift bags for all the people sitting around me, which consisted of chocolate, ear plugs, and a little note from Ollie and Miles saying “Thank you for traveling with us on our first flight! We are planning on napping a lot, but in case we don’t, here’s some ear plugs for you!” We passed these out to all the people sitting around us–they went over VERY well and we had lots of people offering to help us during the flight. For the person sitting in the third seat in our row and all those random nice strangers who went out of their way to help us out, I also packed starbucks gift cards. I figured if people saw me traveling with twins, learned my hubby was deployed, AND I gave them a gift and they still shot me nasty looks if the babies cried, they were mean people. Luckily, everyone was very nice, AND the babies didn’t cry! Woo hoo! Little aviators like their dad!

5. Remember: it’s only a few hours. Keep in mind that even if the kids scream bloody murder the whole flight, you get barfed on, and everyone on your flight hates you….it’s only for a few hours. Chances are, you’ll never see these people ever again. And hey, at least you’ll have a great story to tell!

 

 

2 Comments Filed Under: Babies, Military Life, Musings Tagged With:

Putting in perspective

October 16, 2011 By

As you know, usually I post about my latest baking or decorating endeavor or (more frequently as of late) the boys. But I just had to share this little moment in my life, because it really got to me the other day…

I’m not usually one to hand out cash to people asking for money (and we have a lot of those here in SoCal). I remember listening to a former homeless man who spoke to a high school group many years ago, who talked about how you should’t give money to people standing out in the street, but instead to the programs equipped to help these people. So I generally give to organizations supporting low income or homeless people when asked, and I don’t typically give to people down on their luck. But the other day I was getting gas and I guy asked me if he could wash my windows, which I politely declined. And then I watched as he trotted back to a little shady grass area by the gas station where he had his bucket and squeegee, a bicycle, and…his family, slightly hidden behind the corner. He was a pretty young guy, and sitting on the grass was his young wife/girlfriend and two young kids. A 3 or 4 year old and a baby, who didn’t look much older than my twins, who were cooing away in the back seat.

Now I hate it when people sit on the street corner with their kids, hoping for a sympathy donation, but that’s not what was happening here. The mom was off to the side in the shade, entertaining the kids, while Dad was over at the pumps asking people if they’d like their windows washed. And I thought to myself, “Wow, we sometimes have times where things seem a little tight, but never, ever have we been in a situation where we felt like the Hubby needed to work it at the gas station to make ends meet.” So I looked in my purse, and when I was done pumping gas, I drove over and gave the man the $6 I had in my wallet. Whatever the circumstances (and who knows what they were), I was pretty sure that this young family needed my $6 more than I did.

The man thanked me and asked if I’d like my windows cleaned. I declined, but he asked me one more time, saying that he really, really hated to ask for money, and if he could wash my windows he felt like at least he was helping me out, too. So I let him.

And as he washed my windows we chatted. His kids were 3 and 7 months. He had just recently lost his job and he talked about how hard it was trying to make ends meet without a job, but he couldn’t bring himself to just stand on the corner. So at least this way he could “work” for cash. And then he thanked me again and off I went.

So as I stress about preparing for a move to the other side of the world or grumble about the price of plane tickets as we plan our holiday trip to the East coast to see our family, that little interaction, however brief, really helped me put it all in perspective.

2 Comments Filed Under: Musings

When your dishes smell like penguins…

August 21, 2011 By

When my best friend Leslie was out here this summer helping me take care of the boys, she was doing some dishes, and walked into the living room with a concerned look on her face. She was holding my bottle of dishwashing detergent, and wanted to know well, what kind of penguin odor I had in my dishes. Because this is what was on the bottle:

Thankfully, I have no penguin odors in my dishes. This is just a case of some poorly place information about Dawn’s contributions to world wildlife rescue:

But it made us both giggle!

Leave a Comment Filed Under: Musings
« Older Posts