Pinterest Highs and Lows

In my head I am Super Mom. I save the world by day as an eco crusader, and by night I provide my offsping with engaging, homemade games and crafts guaranteed to make her a genius. Oh Pinterest. You  bitch elusive muse. You know that Pinterest was created by a bunch of coke-addicted Stepford wives to make us all feel bad about ourselves right? I actually didn't do too badly on the projects I chose to take on, but they absolutely did not deliver the hours of focused, delighted, dedication I was hoping for from Eden so that I can spend uninterrupted bliss catching up on television that may or may not include actual domestic engineers from various US cities. I did a search for Toddler Activities on Pinterest. Here's what inspired me, how I made it, and how she liked it.

The Project: PomPom Sorter
The Promise: Delight your child for hours as she quietly learns about colors, size and matching. Great for fine motor building.
The Proof: Dining room is now sporting a fuzzy circle motif.

This was pinned from an Etsy page. "Oh what a cute and simple idea!" I thought to myself. I decided to make my own version and bought the pom poms along with some other crafty doodads I had in mind for other projects at Amazon for about $10.

I took an empty container once filled with Eden's beloved "cheesy poofs" and dusted it out. I cut 3 sized holes in the top to correspond to the 3 pom pom sizes. I promised myself that I would go out to my craft storage and cover the container with some pretty paper. Yeah, that still hasn't happened. Finally I dumped in the pompoms and brought in the kid.

By design, the pompoms must be outside of the container in order for this craft to work. Oops. I opened the container (thereby showing Eden exactly what I did not want her to do) and poured them out into a neat pile on the table. It took about 4 seconds for my dining room to be littered with pompoms courtesy of the windshield wiper style swipe for scattering things on surfaces that she's so fond of. I sighed, gathered up a few pom poms and showed Eden how to put them into the holes. She loved it! It was all going pretty well for a bit, and then she decided to just put all poms regardless of size into the biggest hole. Duh! Of course that's what she would do. I'd be worried about her if she didn't. But I never considered that this would be less of a teaching tool and more like a cannon from which to launch pompoms into the air each time she takes the lid off.

We do still play with this one pretty regularly and she has fun putting the pompoms into the holes for a while before picking up the whole thing and giving it a nice shake. This activity renders about 5 minutes of engagement on average and she seems to like it pretty well.

On My Kindle Now

Reading is definitely one of my hobbies. I always love the "What's on my nightstand" posts from other bloggers, but I avoid paper books at all costs since I live with Scott's thousands of books everyday and I can't stand clutter. So here's what's in my Kindle these days.

1.

It looked pretty good on my "Recommended for You" feed on Amazon so I'm reading it. So far so good though it's not like it's serious literature. I also just found out that NBC is making this into a TV show?! I'll have to learn more about this. 

2. 

I managed to get through the first six months without reading this book very much, and in the last week or two I've been going through it non stop for answers on my kid who goes from weeks when she doesn't feel like eating anything to weeks when she eats everything in sight and similar confusing behaviors. It's set up differently than the pregnancy one so I'm mostly using it for reference and searching for the topics I need instead of reading it cover to cover. 

3. 

This is the April book club selection. I never saw the movie, but I usually really enjoy Toni Morrison books and I'm looking forward to getting into this one. 

4. 

I actually have this in paperback since it's from the library. I have to admit I've barely opened it, but I plan to read it since it comes so highly recommended. 

5. 

This is my guilty trash fun book right now. I loved the first one, ran through the second one, but I have to admit I'm having trouble getting into this one. I'll give it another shot soon. 

Is This A Mom Blog Now?

One thing that's really important to me is to be what I call a Balanced Mom. Notice I didn't say Balanced Person. I discovered soon after Eden was born that the "Mom" part is permanent. I didn't really expect this. I thought I could compartmentalize mom-ness like I do with my other roles like daughter or friend. I am always a daughter or friend, but I don't always have those roles and their associated duties and obligations in my mind. But being a mom is different. Whether I'm at work attending a committee meeting, out to dinner with Scott, or at a book club meeting with my girlfriends, there is a slice of my brain with Eden. I am lucky to have the luxury of setting that slice of my brain aside at times since I have my sister here with her when I cannot be, but I can't deny that my mom-ness never completely retreats.

I'm comfortable admitting that is is a little weird for me. I'm not used to having any one thing dominate my thoughts this way. And it's a little scary. I can see how some people take their mom roll and allow those thoughts, and pressures, and goals to dominate everything else. I could certainly spend ALL DAY LONG pinning stuff for Eden, making stuff for Eden, shopping for Eden, decorating for Eden, planning social activities and play dates for Eden - not to mention feeding, changing, playing with, and caring for Eden. And it wouldn't be that bad either. But for a lot of reasons, I'm not really willing to do this. First of all I don't think it's healthy. And more than anything, I do need to maintain parts of myself that are separate from my roll as a mom just like I need to maintain parts of myself that are separate from my roll as a wife, or an an environmentalist. I have begun thinking about this idea as being a Balanced Mom. The mom is always there, but there's balance with the other things too.

So while this blog (and my life) has certainly taken an Eden slant, I'll still be writing about other stuff. We're putting together a bold (read: crazy) new remodeling plan for our house so that will certainly be a consideration. A lot of the green systems I've set up around our home have begun to break down. For example, our compost jar for the kitchen is broken so we haven't been composting as much, and the clothesline fell down outside and I never got around to putting it back up so we haven't been line drying lately. I'll be working on re-greening around here and sharing those ideas too. The studio has come a long way and I'm ready to set up my craft space now so there's that. And I get a lot of compliments on how I manage to carve out time for myself, for my marriage, and for the things and causes that are important to me so I'll be sharing those things along the way too. I know how much I lean on smart women bloggers when I have an idea for something or need inspiration in a certain area so I hope that the roughly 700 of you (still blows my mind) who visit this site each month will find something worthwhile here in return.

And of course, I'll be mom-ing it up on the regular.

First Family Trip

She Loved the Sea Turtles

We did it! We spent three days in San Diego with Eden and we had a really nice time. I know I scoured mommy blogs for tips for traveling with an 18 month old before we booked our trips this year so I'm happy to post what we learned on our journey along with some of our fun photos.

Eden Having Breakfast at Home

Traveling & Packing
We really took our time in leaving for San Diego (unlike the Russells of Scott's childhood for whom dawn was a reasonable time to leave on a family trip). We packed everything and gassed up the night before so that we could wake up, and have a normal morning. Eden had her usual breakfast at the usual time and her usual playtime. When nap time rolled around, we hit the road and she was asleep before we got on the freeway.

I have to admit here that we packed a ridiculous amount of stuff. All three of us got our clothes into one shoulder bag luggage, but we also packed a food bag with snacks for the hotel and Eden's dinner (why buy her a kids meal she's going to take 3 bites of when we know she loves spinach ravioli and chicken and stars soup?), a toy bag with things like giant Legos to play with in the hotel, and a bedtime bag with her sound machine, sleepsack, bedtime books, stuffed owl, Snowy, etc. so that she would feel comfortable going to sleep away from home. It was kind of nuts and we're still not sure what we're going to do for Hawaii since, hello, we won't be driving there!

She did really well in the car and slept until we were about 15 minutes away from Sea World so we didn't really need the car toys we'd packed.. She must have had a great nap because her laughing is what alerted us to the fact that she'd woken up! I was prepared with all kinds of car activities but it turned out that we didn't need them...then. On the way home we hit some serious traffic and I found myself pulling out all the stops - peek-a-boo, "Open Shut Them", and "Itsy Bitsy Spider", and a couple of books were the best distractions. For this, my only advice is to have an arsenal of car-only toys and books to pull out and show your kid. Eden has this little house that she only plays with in the car and that keeps it fresh.

Being at Sea World
We decided to go straight to the park since we weren't able to check into our hotel until afternoon anyway, but also because we wanted the excitement to start right away. We thought Eden might be more apt to get tired or grumpy if we spent two hours in the car followed by a boring parade of luggage into an unfamiliar hotel room. We'd pre-paid for our tickets (annual passes since they are the same price as one day tickets) and parking so we breezed right in. We were shocked to see the huge crowds on a Tuesday afternoon but it turned out to be the Shamu show letting out so that was a relief. The park was really quiet all three days and we were able to take our time going around a seeing everything.

We decided to take another mama blogger's advice and toss nap schedules out the window. Eden was happy to cat nap in her stroller and we visited some of the quieter aquarium exhibits for those times. Unfortunately Eden is in one of her Mama-centric moods these days and wanted to be carried. By me. Not Daddy who doesn't mind lugging 23 lbs all over. Nope, it had to be me. We tried to show her interesting stuff from the stroller but whenever there was a lull in the action, soft pleas of "Up! floated out from the stroller. Thank goodness we also packed the Ergo so that I could strap her on my back and keep moving.

Good Thing We Had the Ergo

I think Eden liked being there. She looked at all of the animals with interest and loved running around at the Sesame Street Bay of Play. We're pretty strict about TV (all Pingu, all the time), but we started the indoctrination by showing her Sesame Street a few weeks before and it paid off when she smiled and pointed at Elmo instead of running in the other direction. She had a ball playing with the other kids and it was a nice break for us. She enjoyed the turtles, touching the sea stars, the penguins, petting the dolphins and was happy to eat all day.

At the Shamu Show with Daddy

Running Around at the Sesame Street Bay of Play

 Mostly she did what she does everywhere; bird watch. The kid is in love with birds. Everywhere we went we heard, "Tweet, tweet!" (sounds more like "Teet, teet!) as Eden spotted a seagull, or a duck, or a pigeon. Seriously. She was in complete rapture at the flamingos. During the Shamu show was my daughter checking out the giant black and white orca jumping out of the water? Nope. She was pointing happily to a little egret that had wandered on stage in hopes of snagging a wayward fish. All I can say is good thing her admission was free!

Petting A Dolphin Was a Highlight

Underwater Orca Viewing While Everyone Else is at the Show

Pre Meltdown Shot - She Wanted to Get Into the Water

Sleeping
After a few hours the first day we checked into our hotel. We were really excited about the hotel because we got a two room suite for a really great price. It turned out to be exactly like the photos and we were pleased with the room. Nothing special or fancy, but clean and comfy. We called down to the front desk and had them send up a crib when we arrived. A small metal contraption that looked like something out of an institution appeared at our door a few minutes later. After checking it out we popped Eden into it and she refused to get out. She instead rolled around with Beebee, her doll, and laughed for a while. Success!

Hotel Lobby

Our Room - Bedroom Side

Our Room  - Living Room Side

Eden Asleep Surrounded by Her Stuff From Home

We hit up the BBQ place across the street for dinner, put Eden to bed in the living room, and watched a movie on the TV in our room. A few hours later she woke up crying. You have to understand that this is very unusual for Eden. This is a kid who started sleeping through the night at 8 weeks old and with the exception of a wakeful period at 4 months and again at 9 months has been doing it ever since. Our theory is that since we did The Pause with Eden and eventually the Ferber method, she is an ace at soothing herself. The idea is that in the course of natural sleep we all wake up several times during the night, change position or whatever, and go right back to sleep. Babies wake up several times a night too. Some have learned to soothe themselves back to sleep, and some have learned to ask (cry) for milk, or rocking or whatever in order to go back to sleep. We think that when Eden went through one of her sleep cycles and woke up for a moment, she was in unfamiliar territory and cried. We brought her into the room with us, she fell back to sleep a few minutes later, and once we buffered her with pillows so she couldn't roll off the huge king-sized bed, we moved our movie party out to the living room while she slept on in the bedroom. Later we slept on either side of her until morning. This is unusual for us since we are not co-sleepers and I can count on one hand the number of times Eden has slept with us since the day we brought her home. But it worked out ok and everyone got a good night's rest. The following night was pretty much the same except it took her until 4am to wake up crying. We brought her in with us again, and we all went back to sleep.


Eating
I've already mentioned that we brought Eden's food with us. She loves fresh berries and broccoli and that sort of thing, so instead of buying her dinner every night, we just fed her the same things we feed her at home. She eats dinner at 5pm which is way too early for us anyway so it was easy to feed her, bathe her, and put her to bed, and then open a bottle of wine and have a grown up dinner later just like we do at home. I'm looking forward to the time Eden will be able to stay up later and have dinner at the table with us, but this works for now. We fed her the usual stuff and she was happy. In the mornings we went down to the restaurant affiliated with the hotel for pancakes, and for lunches we ate in the park including lunch with Shamu the first day. I think this was a great idea since she wasn't really able to focus on the orcas at the show. She got a chance to see them up close including the new baby! We ate at a couple of other places in the park for lunches on days two and three. They have a ton of kid friendly food and Eden loved it all.

Dine with Shamu is Super Great for Seeing the Orcas Up Close!

Cute Kids Pasta Lunch Option

We had a really great time and since we now have passes, plan to go back again soon even if it's just for the

day. Eden was happy and content the whole time and this has given me the courage to try other kinds of trips   even before Hawaii in the fall. I'm checking out travel ideas for summer now so we'll let you know how it goes!

Work-At-Home Mom

I am fortunate that my organization allows me to work from home two or more days each week. Before Eden came along I thought that this would be an easy thing to do, but it's turned out to be trickier than I expected. I take my job really seriously and I love what I do so I want to make sure that I maintain a high quality of work while still being the best mom I can be. To me this means getting back to people quickly, answering emails, and taking the necessary time to complete tasks. I remember scouring the internet for tips on creating this balance and having trouble. So on this, my one year anniversary of being a work-at-home mom several days each week, I've learned a few things I'd like to share.

Time Management
I've read other work at home mom blogs and t time management really is the core of working at home. Because I am not chained to my computer all day, I  have more flexibility which also helps. If I were a data entry clerk with a set amount of information I had to input into the computer each hour I would have crashed and burned long ago. Instead I have a lot of email to answer the occasional phone call, and tons of writing to do either in editing a website, or program and curriculum development or reporting. But it really does come down to time management. I do my best work from 6 am - 8 am because Scott is still at home, during the two hours or so each day that she naps, and then from 7 pm - 9 pm after she goes to bed. That gives me about 6 hours a day that I've managed to carve out around doing the usual mom things like playing, meals, story time at the library, baths, bedtime etc. On Mondays it's even easier since that's Scott's day off. And I have to say that this is much more uninterrupted, focused work time than I get in my noisy shared office. Studies show that people are more productive when they work from home, and this is definitely true of me.

Mobile Madness
I definitely "work from phone" plenty too. I have my settings such that whenever I receive an email, the phone will alert me. This comes in handy when Eden is in the tub and my boss wants an answer to her question. Being able to immediately get back to people even if I'm not right in front of my computer helps a lot.

Five Minutes of Peace
Sometimes you just have to make or take an important call and it just won't do to have demands for juice overheard on the other end. When Eden was an infant I bought myself time by putting her into her crib and turning on her honeybee mobile. She was mesmerized and I was able to have a quick chat with a colleague. Nowadays my solace comes from Pingu. Each episode is 7 minutes and will buy my the time I need to take care of business on the phone if necessary. I'm not TV mom, but it certainly comes in handy like nothing else.

Take It Outdoors
The best thing about our house is our yard. We have lots of great space for a toddler to explore and I've found that setting myself up on the deck so I can see the whole yard while Eden runs around works wonderfully. One of our favorite games is "In the Bucket" in which I encourage her to place the endless parade of rocks, clumps of dirt, leaves, and bugs she brings me into her yellow beach pail. She likes being praised for dropping things in and it's fun to look and see what was collected that day.

Have a Back Up Plan
Often enough I have to call on my sister, who watches Eden on the days I'm in the office to come by and play for a bit. This is usually for conference calls and the like. Amber is a total lifesaver in a situation like this and I can give whatever I'm working on my full attention for a longer period of time.

Put Your Kid to Work 
It happens sometimes that Eden, a child usually content to do her own thing, wants to crawl into my lap at the exact moment that I need to respond to a timely request or fix a problem on the website. When that happens I pick her up, snuggle her into my lap, and go to dual screen - work for me, and this addictive Twinkle Twinkle Little Star video for her. Works every time, for those quick gotta wear two hats moments. I work on my screen and she "works" on hers.

I do have a unique situation, but like all other WAHMs I have to find the right balance and do my best to maintain a high level in both my personal and professional life. I know I don't always do this perfectly, but so far it's working and I'm so grateful for my circumstances and the people in my life that make this possible. I know I'm always looking for info on this topic so I'll post from time to time when I learn or come across something valuable. Good luck!

Planning for Easter

Personalized Wooden Egg from Etsy Shop Indie Bambinos

Easter planning is in full swing. We're actually going to a wedding on Easter Sunday this year so we're not hosting the all-out lunch and egg hunt at our place. Instead I'll make my leg of lamb and we'll go over to my mom's in the morning, and then leave Eden with her while we attend the wedding. The picture above was Eden's Easter basket last year. Easter baskets for infants can be tricky I think. I was happy with how ours turned out. I bought the basket on sale an Michael's with the idea that I would reuse it year after year. I added the flowers and the moss, and bought the bunny teether, egg, and stuffed needle felt bunny on Etsy. I will reuse the basket, flower and moss this year, and we'll hide her special egg too. Here are some more cute pictures from last year.

Super sweet bunny from Etsy Shop Eve's Little Earthlings.

I'm trying to decide what to do this year. Easter baskets for toddlers may be a little easier than last year. I know that she's the perfect age for a sandbox, but I think that's too large for an Easter gift. I think we'll get another bunny to be friends with the one we got last year and maybe a duck to match. I'm also thinking of one of the books in her favorite series In My _____. She has In My Tree with a baby owl, In My Nest with a baby bluebird, In My Pond with a baby gold fish, and In My Ocean with a baby dolphin. I think In My Meadow with a baby rabbit may be just the right thing for her basket. I'll update once I get started!

Hawaii Disney Style

Excited doesn't begin to express how we're feeling about our upcoming vacation to Aulani. I would go on to describe this amazing family resort in on Oahu along the Ko Olina coastline, but a a picture is worth a thousand words and this video is worth a million.

We have plenty of time to plan but now that we've officially booked our flight and room I had to post. YAY!