Everything that is right in this world lives inside a child.

Everything that is wrong — anxiety, greed, shame — lives inside of me. If I let it.

I am away from my phone today. I am still. But I snapped these photos at lunch. Real quick. The phone went back into the kitchen. I needed to capture what I saw.

She looking at me. He looking at me. I sit at the head of the table.

And the only thing I know, all day today, is that everything that is right in this world lives inside of them.

I wrote about our morning routine before Tristan was born last summer. It was fun to go back and read. We have a new morning routine that I equally love that I will record for you soon.

But it’s the evening routine I’ve been thinking about lately. It’s a workout. Between the hours of 5 pm and 7 pm I sweat. I remember the days when I had “mother’s helpers” to hold a very fussy Tristan while I fed and bathed Elise. It’s not necessary now but, boy, do I sure miss them sometimes.

The earliest Nolan is usually home is 6:30 or 7 pm, just in time to see the kids and read books before bed. When he’s closing a deal (lawyer speak), he’s home at 10 pm or midnight or 2 am. That’s our life and yes, I’ve accepted it but I don’t have to like it.

I feel pretty good about juggling two kids — ages 2 years and 8 months — on my own every night, so I recorded the “minutes” tonight.

During their afternoon nap – I washed the breakfast and lunch dishes and prepped for dinner. (Usually this means chopping or marinating.) I already know what I’m making because we meal plan and shop accordingly. Whatever I make for us, the kids eat. No exceptions. I’m strict like that and we’ve only had a few nights in which the 2-year-old has flat out refused to eat. The 8 month old EATS EVERYTHING. A boy thing?

4:44 pm — An apple pie goes in the oven.

4:45 pm — I start dinner. The kids are crawling around the kitchen, toys scattered everywhere.

5:13 pm — Both kids go in their high chairs and dinner is served. Tonight it’s salmon, roasted asparagus and quinoa with wilted spinach and parmesan cheese.

A few other meals I’ve cooked lately:

Lemon chicken with green beans and potatoes
Cheesy meatballs, served with pasta and a salad.

5:30 pm — I make the mistake of looking at the floor. Food everywhere. Tristan must be getting too much attention because Elise asks me to spoon feed her. I humor her.

5:31 pm — The apple pie comes out and I start clearing dishes. I leave the kids in their high chairs (we love this brand because the kids sit at the table with us) as long as I can. Tristan is crawling everywhere now and I can’t leave them alone together for more than a minute.

Our home isn’t an open floor plan but I do have a pass through from the kitchen to the dining room so I can keep an eye on the kids in their high chairs.

Oh, and our favorite bibs are these by Baby Bjorn. Easy to wash, adjustable strap and they catch a lot of food. Seriously, once my younger brother, unmarried and childless, said that the bib was so cool he would consider having a child just to use it.

5:40 pm — I wipe each kid down and let them play for a few minutes before running the bath.

5:50 pm — Bath time. Luckily the kids’ tub is on the first floor about 10 feet from the dining room. I fill up the tub, strip E and put her in first. Then T goes in. After washing I let them play for quite a while. Bath time is always a lot of fun.

Tristan is on a bath chair in this photo but he can sit up in the tub too.

6:10 pm – This is where it gets tricky. Even though we have a changing table on the first floor, I’m a little nervous about leaving E in the tub unattended so I get T dressed on my lap in our very small bathroom so I can be within arm’s reach of E. Then I let T play in the living room while I get E dressed. (We keep bath towels, pajamas, diapers and other supplies on the first floor or I gather them before bath time begins.)

6:23 pm —  We all head upstairs and I nurse T in his rocking chair while E plays with toys and books between his room and hers.

6:35 pm —  T is in his sleep sack, the sound machine is on and we say goodnight to our sweet little guy. It’s Elise’s job to close his door. And yes, 6:30 pm is his bed time….early, right? But he insists.

6:30 – 7 pm – E is crazy about books so we usually spend close to a half hour reading every night in her room. When Dada is home, like tonight, we’ll let her play downstairs for a bit while the adults catch up.

7:15 pm — Dada takes E up, reads books and she’s down by 7:45 pm. She gets in her sleep sack, sound machine on, her turtle nightlight turned to blue (this is VERY important) and we say goodnight.

At this point, I’m exhausted. I do the dishes, clean up toys, take a shower and waste hours on Twitter catch up on a few foreign policy journals before hitting bed. Exciting, huh?

P.S. I should address the apple pie thing, right? I do love to bake but I rarely make an apple pie from scratch. Elise helped today and we enjoyed a slice after the baby was in bed. I was inspired by this really sweet book that we’ve been reading to E lately.

We live in a yellow house. Elise calls it “the yellow house” as in, “Let’s go to the yellow house.” Or “Let’s go home.” She’s a homebody, kind of like her mama right now.

The yellow house is in the city of Chicago. Not downtown but close to downtown, within Chicago city limits. Elise doesn’t understand this yet because when we drive towards downtown and she sees the skyscrapers she says, “Chicago!” I try to explain to her that the yellow house is also in Chicago but she’s only 2. (And she’s adorable.)

Today at the local grocery store Elise noticed at the end of each checkout counter a photo of downtown Chicago. So as we strolled by each counter she said, “Chicago! Chicago! Chicago!” I never noticed that photo, I thought to myself.

So let’s recap:

We live in a yellow house in Chicago.

My daughter opens my eyes to the simplest things in life. It makes me wonder what else I’m missing just because I’m not looking.

Elise. The Yellow House. Summer 2011.

I caught Elise sneaking out of her bedroom window to meet up with her friends.

No, that’s not right.

But I did catch her trying to take her brother’s bib off while watching me to make sure I wasn’t watching her. It’s like she has a mind of her own. And I want to know how that happened. How is my baby growing up so fast?

How did that happen?

I’m a little tempted to go back and read my posts about Tristan from the early days but I’m not far enough away from them yet. I won’t even link to them here. You can do a search under “HELP, MY BABY IS TRYING TO KILL ME.” Or just search under “Tristan.” Either one. To sum it up, Tristan was a very fussy baby. (But also very sweet and very cuddly.) He still is what I would call “high needs.” For example, just now, he woke up from a 1.25 hour morning nap (not bad). I fed him and changed his diaper. After about 10 minutes on a blanket with rattles and me by his side he became hysterical. He’s not one of these laidback babies who will chill on a blanket or in a chair or swing for very long. It turned out that he was tired again (we’ll get to sleep later) so exactly 1.25 hours after he woke up from his morning nap he’s back down again. At age six months. There’s a lot of inconsistency in his schedule and a lot of guessing — is he hungry, tired, in pain, teething, just needing attention?

I always fear that I come across as complaining on this blog. Maybe that’s why I took a little time off. Any mother of any child will understand that my love for Tristan is, in the words of Jules Renard, “like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.” Even after a very poor night of sleep my heart remembers that big smile he gave me at 4 am. My brain shuts out the crying and fussing. I really love how cuddly and snuggly this baby is. I can’t squeeze and kiss him enough. Yet I know the consequences of stress and sleep deprivation on my mental and physical health. This is all a big balancing act and, of course, a learning process. I’m a student of these two children of mine. They teach me and challenge me every single day.

For my wonderful followers of Tristan’s early days, I wanted to give a few updates…

Reflux: Tristan is still on medication for reflux but I think we should start weaning him from it soon. He still spits up a bit but there is no fussiness related to eating anymore. (I’m still breastfeeding exclusively but I’m ready to supplement with formula every once in a while when I need a break and I choose not to pump.) If you’ve been following the blog you’ll know I went dairy free because we suspected that T was sensitive to milk. About two weeks ago I slowly began introducing dairy back into my diet — namely cheese and ice cream. I’m still determining how he’s handing it but he seems to be doing just fine. I certainly don’t plan to over do it with dairy and I don’t think I’ll ever drink straight milk again. (I love my coconut milk.)

Starting solids: We skipped baby cereal and went straight to “real food” about a week ago — sweet potatoes, avocado, banana, bagels. I’m not opposed to making baby purees (like I did with Elise) but we’re also trying what’s called Baby Led Weaning. The idea is that when the baby is developmentally ready to eat, he will. And he can eat what everyone else in the home is eating. (Very little added sugar or salt, of course.) Tristan is interested in food but still isn’t totally getting it. Right now he’s playing and tasting food and gnawing on big chunks of bagels and banana. I suspect that in a few weeks he’ll get better at picking up food and putting it in his mouth.

Sleep: I really believe that good night sleep sets the tone for the baby’s day sleep, eating habits and temperament so this is an area we still need to work on. If you remember the early days, Tristan slept with us out of necessity. (I’m not exaggerating when I say that he was held or worn or sleeping up against us 24 hours a day.) Cosleeping, for us, wasn’t simple. He needed me to fall asleep and stay asleep, and at 3 months he started going to bed at 7 pm. This was extremely difficult to manage while also caring for a 2-year-old. Around this time (3-4 months) he started to “grow out” of the fussiness so we decided to transfer him to his crib. We chose to teach Tristan how to soothe himself. What that means is that I now put him down awake but drowsy and he falls asleep on his own. (Usually within 1-2 minutes, no crying and with the help of sucking his thumb.) So yes, in order to achieve this it took some crying. Looking back, that was the right decision for us. I’ll never “blanket” recommend it because every situation is different. That said, he’s still waking up twice to eat between the hours of 7 pm and 7 am. I know for a fact that he doesn’t need that first feeding (11 pm-ish) because he starts to fall asleep when I start feeding him. We’ve also tried just not responding to him (like we did last night) and within 10 minutes he was back to sleep. He then got up around 3 am to eat. My view is that if he were really hungry, he’d put up more of a fight to eat at 11 pm. Our plan is to get rid of that first feeding NOW and then deal with dropping the 3 am feeding when he’s a bit older. I think this should help with his day sleep, too. Right now he takes about three naps a day but they are never at the same time or for the same duration. I certainly don’t need him to be on a schedule but I suspect he might be a happier baby if he’s given the structure. Oh, and a little random — just days after we taught him to fall asleep on his own, he stopped screaming in his car seat. It was as if he learned to soothe himself awake and asleep.

Other developments: Tristan is sitting up, rolling around, getting up on his hands and knees. I welcome the mobility! Maybe he’s fussy because he just wants to keep up with his big sister.

How is Elise? The girl can’t get enough of “Baby Nay Nay.” This is good and bad. She’s great at making him smile when he’s having a fussy day but I have to watch her like a hawk. Lately she’s been trying to sit or lay on top of him. Cute, huh?

So there you have it. Everything you ever wanted to know and more. Wait, one more thing. Do you see a resemblance?

Tristan on the left, Elise on the right. Both at 6 months.

]]> http://www.bigcitybelly.com/2012/02/tristan-is-6-months-old/feed/ 2 http://www.bigcitybelly.com/2012/02/about-breastfeeding/ http://www.bigcitybelly.com/2012/02/about-breastfeeding/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:51:23 +0000 Kate http://www.bigcitybelly.com/?p=2129

Breastfeeding is hard.

Or it was. At least for me. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever started. A physical, mental and emotional game. Your head’s got to be in it. Your heart, too, I suppose. I considered writing about all the details. But I won’t. Let’s just say I think I’ve been through it all. Pain, engorgement, low supply, oversupply, reflux, latch issues, nipple shields, clogged ducts.

Then one day* it just works and you notice that his little hand grabs at your shirt. His arms sway. It’s like he’s swimming when he nurses.

Breastfeeding is beautiful.

It’s warm and sweet and, really, it’s a miracle. Except when it’s not. Sometimes it’s just about feeding my baby. So move along. Nothing to see here.

[Listen, for breastfeeding moms, boobs are about breastfeeding. For most everyone else, they're about sex. I get that. That's ok. Can't we all just get along?]

Breastfeeding is good for him.

But let’s be honest. It’s for me, too. I have something to prove. Maybe it’s a control thing (for me). It doesn’t always work for everyone in our household (including me). I’m not quite sure what to do about it but it’s been on my mind.

I’m not sure when I’ll stop breastfeeding. It’s so easy. I promise you, I never thought I would utter those words. If I had it my way, he’ll be a toddler eating real food and drinking from a cup but nursing once or twice a day. I think I’m going to let him decide when to stop. I know that scares people but it just feels right.

*It took us 3-4 months to establish a successful breastfeeding relationship thanks to the help of these people and the support of family and friends. If you’re struggling, find an IBLCE.

I’m just not up for blogging regularly these days but I wanted to check in and say hi.

In December, Elise turned 2. Her birthday party was so much fun. Her personality, her words, her place in our family….it’s all a really fun and special time right now.

Four days later Santa brought Elise this kitchen. We had been talking about it for weeks. It looks like Elise is zoned out here but really she’s in shock. I think she now truly understands cause and effect.

Nay Nay is 5 months old. That’s what Elise calls Tristan so we call him that too. He doesn’t mind.

He’s not really fussy anymore. So that’s good. But he’s also not really sleeping well, either. He is and he isn’t. Inconsistency is what he’s all about these days. And being really cute.

Are you on Instagram? Lately I’ve been posting lists and photos of home projects — my “2012 Home Organizing Project.” My goal is to organize and/or decorate every room in the house so it feels like home. I’m documenting this under the hashtag #2012HOP and would love for you to join me so we can inspire each other.

Months ago I was given a complimentary pedicure at the Urban Mom Salon. Elise played in an adjoining room with a childcare provider while I was pampered. It really is a brilliant idea and I’ve been wanting to share it with my readers. The pedicure was great, the staff was so nice. I’d like to go back. I need to go back. So check it out here.

There’s so much for expecting and new moms in Chicago. I’m really lucky to live in this great city. But right now I’m staying close to home. I’ve been spending some time thinking about what I’d like to focus my energy on in 2012. There is so much to do. The mixture of things becomes so messy. Let’s be honest, there’s nothing nice about potpourri. Too many colors and smells. Its petals become dusty, too.

So I’ll focus on one thing at a time. Or nothing at all. That’s fine with me for now.

Happy New Year, friends.

After I delivered Elise the doctor brought her to my chest and announced that she was a girl. I was shocked. Perhaps I had anticipated a boy so I didn’t have to face the fear of raising a girl. A someday woman, wife, mother and friend who will learn from this right-now woman, wife, mother and friend. It’s an awesome and terrifying responsibility.

I look at her. She looks at me. I see a lot of myself but …

I also see her own-ness shining through.

I’ve been quiet lately. It happens when I just don’t know what to say. I don’t have the answers. I’m sleep deprived and frustrated. I’m struggling with parenting choices and guilt that I’m not enjoying Tristan enough. I kiss his china doll face a dozen times a day and smell his sweet head but I secretly wish he were 5 years old. I wish he could just tell me what is wrong.

I find it strange when people say that they knew their family wasn’t complete after the birth of a child. Right now, my family of four is complete. If we have more children, we’ll be complete then too. I think they call this “living in the present” although I’m guilty of wondering what the future holds. If money, space and health weren’t issues we’d have more children. My heart says yes, everything else says no.

The other night I lay in bed alone thinking about my family. The love, oh, the love. It is painful. It gives me the biggest high. It makes me feel guilty. It makes me proud of myself. It makes me examine my behavior, my mortality, my other loves. The non-parental kind. It makes me want to do a better job.

This love is hard.

This love is oh so worth it.

—

All photos by the very talented Chicago Family Photographer Julia Franzosa.

Poor Elise. I hope this blog is defunct by the time she’s starting to date or looking for her first job.

Our sweet monkey moo is having temper tantrums.

Let’s review. She is 23 months. Her brother arrived when she was 19 months. We moved into a new home when she was 17 months. She started nursery school at 16 months. That’s a lot of activity and change for anyone. All that aside, she’s just a normal, healthy toddler who is living a very full life. She’s speaking in full sentences. She’s communicating her needs and establishing her place in our family. She wants to do what she wants to do. She hates to hold my hand when we cross the street. She wants to play with the baby’s real pacifier and not a toy one. And don’t even think about helping her with that last scoop of yogurt in her bowl.

We took her to the doctor this morning and explained that “she’s just not herself lately.” Sure, she seems to always have a cold but something else is going on. She’s hysterical at times, almost hyperventilating. Last night I kept asking Elise, “What is wrong? What hurts?” After a very thorough exam, the diagnosis from the doctor: temper tantrums and the terrible twos.

My husband and I just looked at each other like, Huh? We just spent $25 and a miserable drive through rush hour traffic for that?

Our doctor said that consistency is key. If you always say no to cookies, then always say no to cookies. If a temper tantrum is happening, IGNORE it. We can also start timeouts, he said. (For the record, we have a “quiet chair” where Elise can read books until she’s ready to join us again.)

I’ve called a family meeting (parents only) so Nolan and I can get on the same page. Do we let her play with her brother’s paci? Is she allowed to take a sippy cup of water to bed with her? How do we handle the throwing of toys? I’m looking forward to this meeting. I already have a running list of topics to discuss.

Here’s where I’m stuck: I’m questioning my judgement as a parent. I went with my gut and it landed us in the doctor’s office with a diagnosis of: you’re being fooled by your 2-year-old. Sure, I ruled out a sickness. Smart. But I’ve got a long road of parenting ahead. How did you handle the toddler years? Any good books or websites I should be reading? Or do I throw the books away and continue to go with my gut? I don’t get offended by unsolicited advice. In fact, I’m soliciting advice!

A note to my sweet Elise: Look at you, you are gorgeous and smart. You are kind to your brother and sweet to your friends. I love you so very much. But the tantrums? They hurt my heart. I want to scoop you up and hold you but I can’t. And I won’t. And I think you’ll be a better person because of it.

Jean-Claude Brizard and his family moved to Chicago this past Spring. Like so many families relocating to the Windy City, they’re renting in a popular neighborhood to get the lay of the land before they settle on a house — and, more importantly, a school — for their toddler. Brizard and his wife, Brooke Stafford-Brizard, aren’t leaving a stone unturned — they’ve done online research, toured schools and attended the popular annual NPN school fair. But there’s one small detail that sets Brizard apart from other parents — he happens to be the new CEO of Chicago Public Schools.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Brizard recently and ask him all about his search.

1. The search for a school in Chicago can be overwhelming. Where do you suggest parents start?

Just the other day, CPS gave parents a powerful resource for starting their school search: an online map with a wealth of detailed school-level information. The CPS website has a useful “find a school” search tool as well. I would also strongly suggest attending our citywide school fairs. Finally, there is no substitute for visiting a school.

Brizard was named CEO of Chicago Public Schools in May.

2. As a former educator and now administrator, what do you look for in a neighborhood school?

My wife (an educator as well) and I first look at achievement data – comparing the school to similar ones and looking at data on more rigorous exams (for example, Brooke and I look at the “Exceeds Standards” data on the ISAT as a minimum bar). We then look at whether the school has a culture of teacher ownership: do teachers hold themselves responsible for helping their students achieve academic success? We also want to see how much schools ask students to take ownership of their own learning.

3. If parents have the opportunity to tour a school, what questions should they be asking? What should they be looking for in the halls and in the classroom?

I would look for student engagement: how much talking teachers do in classrooms versus how often the students talk. Ask the leader what she or he values, struggles with, and what she or he sees as key successes. I would carefully look to see what the principal brags about — it shows what he or she values.

4. As the new chief of CPS, are there any priorities on your agenda for early childhood education?

An advisory panel put in place by Mayor Emanuel recommended that we first need to improve the quality of providers — they assessed that we had enough seats but the quality of programming was mixed across the city. My second goal will be to push for funding to provide free service for all parents in the city.

5. What excites you about raising your family in Chicago?

Brooke and I find the city very livable. We loved the Upper West Side of Manhattan (where we lived) but had trepidations about raising a family in Manhattan. Westchester County and the Outer Boroughs of NYC were much too far a commute for us. Chicago has it all (we love great food and great theater) and we can have a home with a backyard 20 minutes from downtown. Crazy!