Freebies

I was buying last night’s dinner from the neighborhood butcher when I turned around and saw Hans. “What am I having for dinner? Turkey schnitzel, rosti, and broccoli. And you? That also sounds good.” After exchanging these pleasantries, I walked away. “I notice you’re limping a bit,” called the voice after me. “ Yes, I guess I overdid it at the gym last week. You know the damage five minutes of running on the treadmill can do to one’s knees,” I responded a bit sardonically. To his puzzled look, I explained that perhaps my joints were still a bit weak from my recent pregnancy. You know, from the hormones still loitering around in my body. After a couple moments of pondering that, he said, with all the seriousness he could muster: “Now, that’s just one of the freebies you got along with your baby, isn’t it?” That made my day. Once I knew to look for them, I saw other “freebies” baby Paige brought along as her own little offering:

Extreme hair loss when I stopped breastfeeding her. I’d been thinking about a saucy new hairdo.

Orneriness. Isn’t that such a funny word? Now I get ample opportunity to use it!

A “soft” body. Who wants to cuddle up to a tight, muscular body anyway?

Lack of sleep. Eh. You’ll get enough sleep when you die.

do as I say

So, papa was being naughty one Saturday afternoon at lunch time. C- caught licking peanut butter off the knife again. "Mama," she yelled "papa's putting his knife in his mouth again. He's not supposed to do that." I came in from the kitchen and scolded my husband. "How are we supposed to teach C- safety when you break the rules almost daily? We're not having any do as I say, not as I do mentality in this house."

Then C- told him he had to go stand in the hallway as punishment. "No," I said "this offense calls for harsher measures." "Papa, go upstairs, take off your clothes, get in bed, and wait for me." Smiling eyes met over the peanut butter and jelly sandwich; I winked at him and went back into the kitchen.

A few minutes later I heard C- following up: "But papa, mama said you have to take your clothes off and wait for her upstairs. Go ahead - do what mama said!"

"iconic lives"

Do you know Gwyneth Paltrow?

So sweet and pure, an innocent for sure.
Straight blond hair and light eyes, too;
white skin so tight too good to be true.
To be like her, a little girl dreams;
to live like her in a magazine...
Listen to her squeak. Watch as she tweaks
her role as goddess or royalty modest:

a truth we perceive through an actress we believe but ourselves we deceive

Do you know Frida Kahlo?

The tragic frau with a unibrow,
a Mayan mustache she had
a dual life, an affair with strife
and a husband who longed to possess her.
With blood and guts she stained the cloth;
her broken body, pain, and loss
told tales her mind had mangled and jailed:

the artist we neglect her darkness we reject ourselves she reflects.

Did you know Jackie O?

Her public smile and graceful looks
were put on sale and sold in books.
But if we look inside her wide-set eyes,
we’d see a soul dead tired of roles
and parts she was directed to play.
Too few knew she was just me and you:

a wife dismayed and a woman displayed

Our saints have sinned I’m afraid.

No, it's not an oxymoron

Looking for a healthy AND filling SNaCK for you and your youngins? Then try a smoothie. All you need is lots of fresh fruit (the riper the better), yoghurt (the nasty kind with all the live bacteria in it), and a few minutes. Oh yeah, I’d also invest in one of those handheld/immersion mixers; they’re perfect for this type of quick and easy recipe. I don’t mean to be gettin’off the subject, but my staafmixer (in Dutch) has changed my life! This little thing is lightweight, compact, and can go in the dishwasher. Not only does it make a mean smoothie, but, as an alternative to jars, it’s perfect for purée-ing stuff when your baby’s ready for table food. It’s ideal even for the busiest working mom.

Back to the smoothie: try any combination of fruit that seems tasty to you. I tend to use lots of strawberries because C- is pretty partial to pink. In this one I added blue berries, a banana, and a bit of flaxseed, which just goes to show that a snack can be good and good for you.

The Evolution of a Pinky Nail

what once was my pride
now gets stuck
up my baby's nose

Anyone seen a butt wandering around here?

Yikes, what happened to my ass!

It’s sagging. I mean, where’s the nice, round, rock hard rear end I got from I rollerblading around the streets of DC ten years ago? (has it been ten years already?)

Is it a fluke? just another side effect of childbirth? or, heaven forbid, is it gravity? After all, I’ll be 40 in about six weeks. Does it all go downhill from here like my bottom has?

Forgive me if I sound melodramatic or trite, but I can’t help it. As I look at myself in the mirror, I’m confronted with the reality of my ageing and changing body. Before this, my body, especially my booty, basically stayed the same. Thanks to genetics I’ve always been thin. Thanks to my own nervous, anxious disposition I’ve always been active, giving my body, most notably my derriere, a toned look.

Fluffy buns? Not anymore. More like squishy dough.

Before I accept the reality of a flat, saggy, forty-year-old, mother-of-two tush, I plan to hit the gym hard and lift every weight I can get my hands – or rather my rump – on.

How I Beat (up) PPD

P- was born eight weeks ago, but the one question that keeps going around my head is "how can such a little thing generate so much laundry?" I seem to spend as much time doing laundry as holding my baby. Along with vacuuming the living room, cleaning the bathrooms, doing dishes, blah, blah, blah. Staying on top of it all is enough to stress anyone out. But, I like a clean house so I was determined to do it all.

Imagine my dismay when my psychiatrist told me to consider putting housekeeping at the bottom of my list of priorities as a way of staving off postpartum depression. After my three-year-old, C-, was born I had a bad case of it, even though I didn’t know it at the time. In retrospect, I now see how my postpartum situation invited the depression in: we’d just been married a few months before, we’d moved a month after the birth, my husband had just taken on the new responsibilities befitting a big, fat promotion, I was determined to finish writing my dissertation while on maternity leave, and I was preparing to teach a new course when I returned to work. Oh yeah, the hormones raging through my body didn’t exactly help.

This time I was determined to do battle with PPD head on and fully armed. My GP and midwives hooked me up with a psychiatrist in the last weeks of my pregnancy with Paige. During our first session she made clear that I actually could influence the onset of depression. What a revelation. I’d always thought that since it ran in my family, I was genetically predisposed to its affects no matter what. Luckily, I was wrong.

In fact, we put together a strategy for keeping depression at bay. The first line of defense was to let the laundry pile up, leave the dishes in the sink for an afternoon, and ask my husband to clean the toilets. She explained that a major factor contributing to PPD was fatigue. Especially in the first six weeks I was to sleep, rest, and or relax whenever the baby slept. If I didn’t manage to do that, I had strict instructions to do something nice for myself: have a cup of coffee, take a walk, listen to my favorite CD, etc.

I decided to take her advice and have found a few minutes a day (well, at least every few days) for myself to just sit on the couch and listen to my heart beat or read a couple of pages from my book or take a slow walk around the block. Like she suggested, I took the baby's crib out of our bedroom and have managed to get a good night's sleep just about every night. I make sure I get out of the house everyday, even if it's just to walk to the store to get groceries for the day. I even managed to go see George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars this year when they performed at a festival in Holland.

Even though I have no control over my hormones, which are thought to be another principal contributor to PPD, I've found that I do have influence over how I choose to spend my days. I've chosen to spend my time enjoying my baby, my three-year-old, my husband, and myself as a mother the second time around.

I still do my chores on a daily basis, but I limit myself to whatever I can do within 20 during which time I knock myself out making beds, folding laundry, vacuuming, and reorganizing closet space - ok, I've never done that (but I'd sure like to!). When the baby's asleep, I still have time to do the more important things like launch this blog.

And, PPD hasn't dared show its ugly mug around here!