This one? I don’t know where she learned this. But OH boy is she something else.
I’m not even kidding, you guys. She has this all measured out, perfected.
It’s time to go to bed. She knows it, but I have yet to say a word. Suddenly, she comes over and reads a book to me, giggling sweetly at all the right places. She pets my arm and sweetly kisses it and says, “Mommy, you are the BEST!”
Really? Because you hated me 20 minutes ago when I put your shoes away (because that’s apparently a really fun chore and I stripped all joy from her by doing it FOR her).
She bats her eyelashes. Only she doesn’t really know exactly how to do that, so she mimics what she thinks she’s seen somewhere. Where? Who knows. Could be anywhere.
I blame Daisy Duck.
She squints her eyes tightly in an attempt to look coy. At least I think it’s supposed to be an eyelash bat.
“Eat your dinner now. I will not tell you again.”
She runs up to me with her winningest smile and proclaims, as clear as a bell, “You, Mommy! You are the very best Mommy I have EVER seen!”
Mmmm hmmm. Go to bed.
To all the moms out there,
whether your babies are 2 weeks old, or 50 years old…
whether you can hold them in your arms, call them on the phone, or remember them as they’ve gone before you to be with the Lord…
whether they’re growing miraculously inside your body, or are a dream of hope and expectation for the future inside your heart…
and for those whose moms are no longer here to bless with flowers and cards and wishes of love…
May you all have a beautiful day. Know you are celebrated and loved and appreciated. Know there is no other person in the world who could ever take your place. Know that when the days are long and hard and the weeks ahead seem impossible, and the pay is low and the job at hand seems thankless, you’re going to make it. And you’re doing great.
Know you are the best mom ever. Because you are.
Happy Mother’s Day.
So, in April, I decided to take a one-month vegan pledge. Why?
Why not?
I was curious, after putting in three relatively easy (and totally successful) months of cleaning eating, how I would feel if I cut out dairy, meat and other animal products. It wasn’t my grand idea though. I’m easily influenced. My super awesome friend Kacia made it look delicious and easy, so I tried it with her.
Anyway.
I decided to make it a one-month experiment. And I liked it. I tried SO many new things, and ate SO many vegetables and fruits every day. Pretty awesome.
Plus, I got my daughter totally into chickpeas and quinoa. Bonus.
So I’m sticking with it, but don’t call me a vegan. I’m so fickle with food, it hardly seems fair to people with convictions. I just think it’s fun, especially during the time of year when there are so many delicious new things growing from the ground to try!
Obviously I’m not going to win any veganism evangelism awards for my own lifestyle, but maybe I can convince you to try a new recipe. Because seriously? How delicious does THIS look:
That, my friends, is vegan pizza. Sans meat, sans cheese. And I promise you, unless you’re one of those unadventurous meat-and-potato types (like Sean, so I know you’re out there), you would not miss cheese one little bit on this pizza.
It’s just that good.
What’s on this little bit of culinary yum? Let’s have a closer look, shall we?
And when this lovely little thing came out of the oven, I topped it with fresh lettuces, straight from our neighborhood farm collective, and drizzled it with just a little bit more balsamic glaze.
I see you scratching your head. Not all of these ingredients are things you’ve heard of, huh? Cashew…cheese?
Yup. Cashew ricotta cheese. The very mention of it makes me picture my pastor’s super-Italian wife recoil in horror (I’m kidding, Debbie!). But you have to trust me here. Something things are JUST weird enough to work.
So without further ado, my fantastically awesome vegan pizza recipe, bottom to top.
The Crust
We make a lot of homemade pizza around here. A lot. I’ve tried oodles of recipes. Dozens. This one is a winner. Why? Because it’s 15 minutes, start-to-finish, and is absolutely delicious. Plus, you really can’t screw it up. I’ve tried other fantastic ones, but they take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours (HOURS!) to rise, rest, etc. And frankly, I work full-time and when I get home, I’ve got to feed my people quickly because bedtime is right around the corner (*tear*).
Here’s the thing about homemade crust. If you want whole wheat, and who wouldn’t, your crust will be denser and tougher. No way around that. I mean you can add extra oil to make it smoother and easier to knead, but it will still be denser and less “authentic” tasting than one made with white flour.
I propose a compromise. Half-and-half. But only as long as you’re using UNbleached all-purpose flour as your white flour (no, really you can do whatever you want, just don’t tell me).
Enough talk. The recipe!
Ingredients:
1 package active dry yeast
1t white sugar (yeah yeah yeah, not entirely clean. relax and do it.)
1 cup warm water
2 1/2 cups flour (you can do all wheat, all AP, half and half, whatever)
2+ T extra virgin olive oil
1t salt
Italian spices, to taste
Directions:
{1} Preheat oven to 450. In a medium bowl, dissolve yeast, sugar and water and let them sit until creamy, about 10 minutes-ish. {2} Stir in everything else. I use a stand mixer because it’s infinitely more convenient. Beat it all until it’s smooth and then let it rest for 5 minutes. {3} Knead it until it’s smooth again and then lay that baby out on your pizza stone.
At this point I par-bake it. Is that a thing? I bake it for maybe 5 minutes and THEN top it. I don’t know if it helps, but it makes me feel fancy.
And there’s your crust.
I use this recipe and then break the ball into two pieces so I have two pretty little personal-sized pizzas. One they are par-baked (again, if that’s even a thing), I topped it with cashew ricotta “cheese”, some pesto, chopped up roasted red peppers, banana peppers and kalamata olives.
I drizzled it with balsamic glaze that I found at the grocery store.
Then, I bowed my head and observed a moment of silence.
Oh wait…
The Cashew “Cheese”
Yeah, here’s what you do for that:
Ingredients:
1 pound of raw cashews
Water
Lemon juice
2-4 cloves of garlic
Salt
Garlic powder
Nutritional yeast (optional)
Directions:
{1} Soak the cashews in water for at least 6 hours. It makes ‘em good and soft. {2} Drain the cashews and put in a food processor (or fancy blender, if that’s more your speed). Add all the other ingredients in amounts that suit your fancy and give you a taste you enjoy. Just like dairy ricotta, this will turn out mildly sweet and creamy. I added the water last, so I wouldn’t get it too juicy. {3} Process until you’ve hit your desired creaminess. {4} Taste it and exclaim, “Holy cow, that’s insanity!”
Okay, so you’ve topped your pizza with all the deliciousness and you toss it back into the oven for, say, 10 minutes? Maybe 15.
And then when it comes out, top it with fresh greens and another drizzle of balsamic.
Take a picture.
Post it to Facebook or Instagram. Heck, AND Instagram.
Feel fancy.
And then crack open a bottle of Woodchuck and eat it all. Because it’s delicious. And because you can.
I’ve been a mom for almost three years now and I feel like this morning, it all finally clicked for me.
When I was pregnant with the iToddler, I was full of ideals. My pregnancy was obnoxiously perfect. Perfect weight gain, perfect diet, perfect activity level. Perfect glow on my perfect skin from under my perfect, shiny hair.
I had perfect ideas ::
I would have a natural birth.
With midwives.
In a birth center.
I would wear her.
And co-sleep with her.
And breastfeed.
And use cloth diapers.
And use an alternative vaccination schedule.
And make all my own baby food.
And homeschool.
And because we didn’t know her gender, if she was a boy, we would not circumcise.
I read some books, but not many. I was overwhelmed with information and sort of fell into all the theories and methods and philosophies that I saw most readily in classes at The Midwife Center.
Pretty soon, I heard that what I wanted to do had a name…called Attachment Parenting. So without further research, I just started saying that’s what I was doing.
But really, I didn’t have a clue. I was just doing what it seemed like I ought to be doing based on what I saw being done by other parents who seemed to look like me.
As time went on, we did a lot of those things. We succeeded at some, failed at others, scrapped others altogether because they just didn’t work for us.
I gave birth in a hospital. With a midwife and drugs. I co-slept for 6 months and breastfed for 23 months and used cloth diapers for a little more than a year before we switched her to disposables. She got standard vaccines on a standard schedule. Sometimes I wore her. Sometimes she sat in a chair and watched me. Sometimes she ate freshly mashed avocados and sometimes she got Earth’s Best, or [ gasp ] Gerber’s.
I defended my choices.
I doubted myself.
I looked to others for approval.
I made excuses.
I judged others for not doing things the way I was doing them.
I judged them because something wasn’t going perfectly and obviously that was their fault.
Because clearly I was right, even though I didn’t really know why.
I was ugly.
She slept perfectly from the moment we got her home. 12 hours at a time. I’d pick her up in the middle of the night and she’d nurse while sound asleep. When it was time to move her into her crib and wean her off the swaddle wrap, it was effortless. She’s never regressed.
We were accidental geniuses.
We knew it all, instinctively.
We rocked this parenting gig.
Enter BAM.
My pregnancy with BAM was anything but perfect. I was very heavy. I could barely walk from a pelvis injury very early on and was in physical therapy twice a week. I ate nothing but pork and wings. I had horrific anxiety and needed to go on Zoloft (take THAT, Tom Cruise). I had previa that required rest for a long time. At one point, they thought my gall bladder had to come out. Another time, they thought I had a tumor on my kidney.
And eventually, he arrived 3 weeks early and ended up in the NICU after a drugged up, far-from-perfect, F-word filled, and not even remotely dignified labor.
I barely had time to think. When I went into work that day, I fully expected to go shopping with my friend Tink that night. I intended to work on pulling the nursery together that weekend. I intended to work from home for the next 3 weeks until he arrived.
And then there he was. Early.
And there were questions and assumptions in the flurry of activity that followed.
No, please don’t circumcise him.
No, please don’t give him formula.
No, please don’t give him a pacifier.
No, please don’t give him the Hep B shot.
Yes, please wake me up any time of the day or night to feed him.
Yes, I’m serious.
No, I don’t need to rest. Call me and I will feed him.
Since bringing him home on December 6, I haven’t put a ton of thought into most things. It’s not the same as with iToddler. In the beginning I called this “2nd-baby-laziness” or the “two-baby-crazies”. This morning, though, it clicked for me.
This is my coming-of-age.
This is where I so naturally and organically mesh with my babies that I just know what they need. This is where I am so comfortable in my own decisions and choices for MY family, that I don’t have to make excuses or judgements. This is where I learn from the lessons of humility that God placed before me time and time again over the past year.
This is where I take a deep. breath. and stop explaining myself. Stop comparing myself to other moms.
Because my babies and my marriage are the greatest items of personal and spiritual stewardship that I have. My God entrusts me with these delicate and precious lives and He hasn’t left me on my own to figure it out.
He’s given me community.
He’s given me instinct.
He’s given me His spirit.
This morning, I posted an update on BAM’s sleeping “problems” on Facebook. We had moved him back into our bedroom after a failed attempt at moving him into his own space. I was so thankful to have him back and was very pleased that he seemed comfortable too. He had only woken five times, and only to eat. He and I, we seemed to finally have a night where we were in sync.
I got a response immediately, and I was hurt by the sentiment. Although the person intended to be helpful and loving, the message I received was loud and clear:
You are not doing something right. This is not normal.
Immediately I wrote a response on why the advice was so wrong and bad and whywhywhywouldyouevensuggestthat?
And that’s the precise moment it clicked.
I cried. I told Sean how I felt. I talked through it all and realized that grace. Grace. It extends not just to me, but to my friends and family. It extends to my children. I don’t just receive it :: I need to pour it out.
I deleted the post. I rejected, in my heart, the opportunity to take the advice as anything beyond what it was meant to be :: a well-meaning suggestion to try to help us all out.
I don’t need to explain myself. I don’t need the validation from an established method or the consensus of a group of people. I just need to know my babies and trust the gut God gave me. And I need (and LOVE) the encouragement and ideas of my community of friends and family along the way, even if I don’t necessarily agree with their proposed solutions.
So, today?
Today I realized that even though I might look like that mom, I can’t be defined by any philosophy or book or methodology or anything. I’m just Jen, mom to iToddler and BAM. Wife to Sean. And I make my decisions with my brain and my heart.
And that? That’s pretty close to perfection.
Can we talk for a minute about this kid?
Don’t stare directly into his eyes. Don’t be deceived over by his charming, adorable glow and flirty smile. Don’t think for a minute that this kid cares about your rest.
He careth not.
He’s a fan of wakefulness. An overachiever. A genius at not sleeping.
We’re working on getting him into some kind — any kind — of a regular system, but in the meantime
my God, am I tired.
Like everything in my gut is all tied up and wishy washy, I can’t focus on a task for any productive amount of time and I say
really
really
stupid things.
I’m not really know for having much of a filter to begin with. This has gotten me into much trouble. But with this whole exhaustion nonsense, I’m just plain batty.
On one hand, I think the lack of sleep has triggered a part of my brain making me extra creative.
Here’s a poem I wrote to him at 3 a.m.:
Here we are again.
Me, on Unisom and you,
5-Hour Energy.
We are entirely incompatible
from sunset to sunrise,
but I love you so.
Your saucer eyes and playful coos mock me.
“Sleep, sleep”, I plead,
Through bleary-eyed desperation.
And still you are there, a smile and a lying yawn,
Jilting the sandman.
Behold, the power (and humor) of community:
We’ve had a rough week. Can’t really sugar-coat that for you. It’s just been downright rotten. My dad went into the hospital with pneumonia, my son (in typical BAM fashion) spent most of the wee hours of the night cooing instead of snoozing, and our pediatrician told us that our girl was struggling with seasonal allergies and prescribed her Claritin to take every single day.
But another, more concerning thing happened. Our girl went crazy.
Bonkers.
Psycho.
Downright possessed.
Starting on Tuesday, we noticed that her normal cheerful disposition (speckled with normal toddler moodiness) was replaced with violent rage, screaming episodes fit for the scariest of horror flicks and random freak-outs about bugs and worms.
I’ve heard that 3 years old is worse than two, but could it REALLY be this bad? I swear this kid levitated more than once.
I went to Facebook for help.
You can see I had quite a response. But even with pretty much everyone agreeing that this was, indeed, normal, something just didn’t seem right to us. There was no gradual increase in temper intensity.
She just went flat-out demonic. She would scream bloody murder for 20, 30 minutes at a time. A blood-curdling, angry, violent scream, two inches from our faces. She suddenly became terrified of pipe cleaners, insisting that they were worms. She saw bugs in our house that weren’t there.
One night, at bedtime, she was thrashing so badly, Sean and I had to both hold her down to keep her from hurting herself. It was truly frightening.
Eventually, all the feedback from our friends and family convinced us that we had, in fact, entered upon a terrifying and miserable stage of toddlerhood. We felt immediately defeated, and then got a bug up our butts about taking our home back into our own control.
About two hours before we were to get together, I got a message from another mama who had been dealing with the same kinds of things, only with her 9 year-old. After lots of research, she had narrowed it down to the fact that he had recently started taking Zyrtec for allergies and asthma.
And she had found that Claritin was also often named as an offending medication with the same side effects.
Huh.
So I checked out the link she suggested I read and was absolutely shocked.
| “My Child is almost 2 I gave her Claritin for allergies and she was a COMPLETELY different child!!!! I will not give this to my child anymore! She was angry, throwing things, nightmares, nervousness, restless, EXTREME mood swings she was VERY scared of everything in the mornings. I feel HORRIBLE thinking it was just her terrible 2′s in full effect. I wouldn’t reccomend [sic] Claritin to ANYONE for their children!”
“My 3 yr old experienced anger, crying jags, couldn’t sleep, hitting his sister, hyperactivity and yelling. We began to see these side effects approximately 1 hour after taking one tablet of the Children’s Claritin (Grape flavor).”
“DO NOT GIVE TO CHILDREN!! hallucinations of bugs trying to kill her, NIGHT TERRORS, irritability!!!!! My daughter would wake up throughout the night screaming, crying, telling us bugs were trying to kill her. It was awful. I realized this started a week ago when she started taking Claritin, its the Loratadine as he took the generic brand also.”
“My son became very uncontrollable with many outburst and tantrums daily. He would have violent anger attacks on me and I was beginning to feel like a horrible parent that didn’t know what to do for my child. We had been giving him claritin for 2 months and happen to forget to give it to him a couple nites [sic] in a row and we seen a drastic change in behavior. He was back to himself, loving and fun.”
constipation,urinary retention,violent outbursts, hallucinations(seeing bugs everywhere), drug withdrawal,severe stomach cramping, sore & cramping muscles” |
Get the picture?
I was devastated that I gave this crap to my beautiful, cheerful little girl without doing any research at all. And then I basically made fun of the craziness to my friends. And in the mean time, my poor little pumpkin was agitated, depressed and scared.
We stopped immediately and our girl was back to her old self by evening. We knew we were heading toward the clear when we were at Michael’s picking up some craft supplies and she ran up to the cashier and said, “HIIIII! I’m iToddler! What’s YOUR favorite color?”
Man, I love her.
The next morning (this morning, if you’re keeping track), she was completely back to her old self, no hint of the terror that haunted her for the previous three days.
At that point, we were 98% sure that we had the problem resolved, but the true test required something more crafty. Literally. I broke out the pipe cleaners. Sean twisted two together and I asked him to try to make it look like a worm.
And will you look at this?
It was really important to me to write about this and put it out there. I’m so so very thankful to the beautiful mama who reached out to me to share her story with her son, and I pray that she is finding some relief now that he is off his Zyrtec. Since the saga played out on Facebook, lots of people said they’ve heard of these types of awful side effects, but even more were shocked to learn about the possibilities.
It’s my hope that this will help even one family avoid the fear and heartache we’ve dealt with over this past week (and my friend has dealt with for a month). Please leave a comment if you’ve ever deal with this with your kids. Solidarity, friends! We’ve got to help each other out.
As for us, things are completely back to order. And I’m back to focusing on the funny and fantastic, rather than the fearful.
And that’s a place I’m very, very thankful to be.
(and yes, that is a banana in my toaster)
 Look, Mommy! I cooking my banana!!!
Hey, here’s a quickie! Are you on Instagram and Pinterest? If so, look me up and give me a follow. I’m imanimama pretty much everywhere.
When my girl’s personality started really coming out, it became clear pretty quickly that we were in for quite a ride. Every glint of orneriness in her eyes is so familiar to me.
Just like looking in a mirror.
So it should come as no surprise when she pulls little pranks or stunts that make it clear that she’s already mastered the fine art of, um,
manipulation.
I wish it wasn’t true. I wish the only thing she ever learned from me was how to be pure of heart and generous and loving. But let’s be honest. She’s my kid. In that sense, she’s a little bit doomed.
For example, she’s gotten really, really good lately at stalling at bedtime. It’s funny to me because she doesn’t hate bedtime and she’s a really good sleeper. If I can JUST get her to the bed. That’s the trick. But getting her to the bed ain’t easy.
The other night, Sean was out, and I was hanging out with both kids. I got the baby down to sleep temporarily so I could focus on making dinner for, and spending time with my girl.
The following is a conversation that took place over 45 minutes. You read that correctly. I attempted to rationalize with a toddler for 45 minutes.
On the kitchen floor.
[ Parenting fail ]
Me: What do you want for dinner?
I: Ummmm, how…about…grilled cheese and apples!
[ okay, i can do that. whips up a grilled cheese, slices up an apple, and presents it on a mickey plate. BAM! ]
I: I don’t want it! I want marshmallows!
Me: You can’t have marshmallows, honey. It’s dinnertime. Eat your grilled cheese.
I: No! I don’t want it! I don’t want it!
Me: Eat your dinner and you can have marshmallows afterward, before bed.
I: No! It’s not bedtime, I don’t want to go to bed!
Me: FOCUS. Eat your dinner and you can have marshmallows.
I. Marshmallows. Marshmallows. MARSHMALLOWS!
Me: Honey, can we have a talk about marshmallows?
I: Sure, Mommy.
Me: Okay, look, marshmallows are dessert. Dessert is something sweet that you eat AFTER dinner. But not after every dinner, only sometimes. And you have to eat your dinner FIRST. Do you understand?
I: Yes Mommy.
Me: Okay, eat your dinner.
I: No Mommy, I want to eat something different for dinner!
Me: FINE. What do you want?
I: [ looks up, scratching her chin ] How… about… DESSERT?!
I’d love to tell you this ends well. It doesn’t. She got a new dinner of strawberries and cheese bites, and a dessert of marshmallows and M+Ms.
Damn, I’m a sucker.
Truth is, sometimes I reward her cuteness and creativity when I should reign her in and just be a parent. I mean, come ON. Go to BED already, right? But I can’t do it right ALL the time, lest my secret supermommyhood be discovered. [ groan ]
I don’t really mind the occasional battles, to be honest. After all, where else would I get my writing material?
————————–
For more fun reading on toddler bedtime stalling, check out this post on babble.com.
My girl goes to something called Kids Clubs at a local church every Tuesday night. It’s sort of like scouting, only faith-based…specifically, Christian. You know, because we’re friends with Jesus, n’at. The two year-olds are all in a class together (God BLESS those teachers!), and they all wear purple shirts.
So of course she calls it “Purple Shirt Night”.
Today on the way home, we had this conversation:
I: Mommy, I worshipped with my Purple Shirt Night friends tonight!
Me: You worshipped?
I: Yes! I did!
Me: Do you know what worshipping is?
I: Yes! When you worship, you sing to Jesus. He is the light!
Sweet mercy, I think right then and there I got butterflies in my stomach and a lump in my throat, and for a moment I realized
despite all the chaos
the impatience
the tantrums
the fear
the frustration
the exhaustion
the major fail moments [and boy are those abundant]
we’re doing something right.
And it’s really a good thing, too, because with a cutie who looks this comfortable on the back of a motorcycle at 2 years-old, we’re gonna have to keep that girl covered in all KINDS of prayer.
Can I get an amen?
 Oh boy. This one's gonna be a handful.
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