Call Me Mrs. Frazzle

Sometimes mothering a toddler makes me feel like I’m losing my mind.

 

When a day starts off too early (read: no time to blog!), continues with a too-short nap (read: no time to knit, my new hobby), and climaxes with too many pokes at my glasses and pulls at my hair, I wonder when I’ll have two logic thoughts together again.

 

Then I chastise myself for thinking I’d do something for me today, rather than relishing every moment of head-butted “kisses” on the floor. I remind myself that someday, Jacob may not want to give me a random hug or six in the middle of the afternoon. I know that most of what I’d planned for today isn’t really necessary, and time is better spent with my little boy. But then, today turned out so different from yesterday, and then tomorrow will probably turn today on its head. I never know what to expect, and while that’s the challenge, it’s a joy as well.

 

 

Being mama to a toddler means plans always change, your time is rarely, if ever, your own, and it may be four o’clock before you realize you have consumed neither fruit nor vegetable all day.

 

Today I am tired, and a little cranky, and can’t do literary justice to the Montreal Biodome as I’d intended. But today I had the blessing of a day at home with the cutest, giggliest, snuggliest little boy on the planet. And the one definitely outweighs the other.

Somewhere to Lay Our Heads

One surefire way to test the limits of your faith in God is to apartment hunt in New York.

We knew we needed a new apartment five months ago, but could only really start looking the last week of June, because of the way the market works in New York.  Even then, barely anything worth seeing was listed before the Fourth of July holiday weekend.  We found something great within two days of determined searching—but it was two days of searching after five months of waiting.  Our friends commented that our search seemed short, but for me it felt like forever.

The search was a good reminder of how important it is to trust in God, how without that trust, life can easily take a downward spiraling journey to the borderlines of despair.  I was stressed and thought about virtually nothing else for a couple of weeks, all the while trying to keep in mind the same verse that came to me when I wasn’t sure my business was going anywhere:

“Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.”  Matthew 6:28-29

By God’s grace, I reminded myself to keep thinking of the lilies and know that God had gotten us this far, and He certainly isn’t going to stop helping us now. It seems that the good things in life are always the ones that come with struggles.  If that really is the case, then the anxiety suurounding this hunt meant we were in for something great.

We scoured a couple of rental search engines online for the first week of July—it’s really the only way to do it, we’ve found.  You can’t just use one realtor, because they may not have all the listings, and there’s always a chance that your dream apartment will be a no-broker’s-fee listing.  Plus, all the really good ones are snapped up in about twenty-four hours, so you need to be on your toes. If something’s posted for more than a few days, you figure there’s got to be something wrong with it.

As a token of our search, here’s a list of the apartments we saw online and didn’t even bother to view in person.

These all fell within our approximately twenty-block radius, had two or three bedrooms, and were priced within our range, which swung about $500 wide.

With these out of the running, not too much else was left.  Among what remained were the apartments we made appointments to view, only to trek there (with Jacob . . . although not at nine p.m.) and find no realtor, no phone call, no text message, no nothing.  Then there were the ones for which we didn’t even get a response to our call, or text, or email.  Frustrating!

Finally, we found it.  It wasn’t one we called about (called something like six times and texted once) because that one had an application in on it by the time we got a return call, but another unit that had just been listed.  We saw it as soon as possible—John rushed to Brooklyn from Manhattan once I told him it was a good one—and fourteen hours later (sleeping in between), with a just-baked banana bread in hand, we signed the lease.

Our new apartment is in a better location than I ever dreamed of—the good supermarket is at one end of the block; our Sunday church is at the other.  The good bagel place is right around the corner.  A fancy food market is just four blocks away, the little kid playground at the park is super close, and apparently it’s in a very desirable school district, should we still be there when we need that.  The living room and dining room feel like one wide open space, which we love, and the backyard (that’s right, backyard in Brooklyn!) is not only deeper than any other we’d seen, but it also already has a swing set assembled there.  Have I shared how much Jacob loves swings?  Almost as much as he loves beef.

Oh, and there’s room to grill, so double-win for J-money.

This week, I’m feeling like a lily.  God has cared for us, provided for us, and shown me yet again the awesome power of prayer and faith in Him.

Amen!

Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner.

Jacob has a new love.  One that proves he is very much his grandfather’s grandson.  Which grandfather, you ask?  Either!

 

Because he’s our first and I pretty much have no idea what I’m doing when we start something new, I went by the book when we stared introducing solid foods.  We started with rice cereal and then added in fruits and veggies.  Sometimes I did add more than one food in a day, and often there were only two days between new foods.  Still, at times it feels like the process is taking forever. I may loosen up a bit more with the next little one, but for the most part, what we’re doing is working.  I think any perceived delay in how far along Jacob is with solids is more about what he’s ready for than what we’re doing.

 

Anyway, moral of the story, we’ve only recently begun to introduce meats.  Here’s how I’ve observed Jacob’s reactions.

 

Lamb?  Okay.

 

Turkey?  Doable. 

 

Chicken?  Ohh, fun to bite pieces off of a little chunk.

 

Tuna?  Mmm . . . not so bad when it has some garlic on it.

 

Beef?  Oh. My. Goodness.  Best stuff on earth. More!  More!  Must have more beef!

 

I have never seen him take to a solid food the way he takes to ground beef.  I’ve learned I need to put only one piece at a time on the high chair tray, because he will grab every bit he can see and put it all into his mouth at once.  Chewing and swallowing are overrated in his mind, and he inevitably coughs/chokes on the mass of beef (read: about a half-teaspoon’s worth) he has in his mouth.  Self-feed?  Let’s try self-shovel.

 

This is just another example of how much fun it is to watch him respond to his world.  Last week, I marveled over the way he sometimes used two hands to eat a single Cheerio.  And he’d bite it in half first, to boot!

 

I’ve never looked at ground beef or cereal the way I do now that Jacob is a part of my life, and I’ll certainly never look at them the same way again.

 

This is what motherhood is all about, and I am so grateful for the gift.