Chicago Mama Spot

Paying the Price

It is no fun being a mommy when you've been a little party girl the night before.  Thankfully, Sweet Pea is a snoozer.  She is still sleeping past 9:00 am.  Today was almost 9:30.  Yes, I drank too much champagne and ate too little for dinner.  I had to fit into my "hot" jeans, right?  Nothing hotter than a "had a little too much drink" girl wobbling around in heels. 

I think all I did today was feed Sweet Pea.  She woke up, we had breakfast.  By the time, we were done it was almost lunchtime.  After lunch, naptime.  She slept until after 4:00 and then, it was almost dinnertime.  Bedtime at 7:00.  How can she sleep so much?  She's has a cold and is getting some teeth in, but still.  She's sleeping like a newborn.

I know this is a very boring post and I'm sorry about that. I'm trying to get my drunk post off the top.  I could delete it, but it seems like cheating.

Envy

We had a fun night out at a surprise party for one of Daddy-O's friends tonight. Great nightclub spot in Chicago.  All I really wanted was his adorable family. 

I want more than just my one little Sweet Pea and it just seems like it's getting harder to accept, the older she gets. 

Venting, venting and venting.

I know I need to get over it and I thank everyone for reading/listening.

As Sweet Pea would say "Boo Hoo Hoo said the baby."  I know I'm lucky as hell to have just one.  Why am I so damn greedy?

xoxo.  (Drunk post?  Yes)

High School Fashion

(Forgive the mis-aligned pictures and text.  I don't know what my problem is, but I can't get it aligned right.)

At least I know I'm not alone.  The warm weather is making my brain stop working. 

This is just the best I can do right now:

They say that your core fashion likes and dislikes are based on what was in style when you grew up - I assume "they" meant high school.  I can't remember where I read about this, but I think it holds true for me. 

Preppy was in when I started high school and I embraced it with my whole little fourteen year-old self.  For a while my dad insisted on calling me Kiki.

Check out my preppy self.  Don't I look happy?  How about that posture?  I'm not sure if you can clearly see the lovely bows all over my head.  After spending what looks like hours with the curling iron, I braided back one side and then just pulled back the other.  So cute, huh?

Again, with the great posture.  I loved the striped polos.  The hair is looking lovely with a french braid down the back.  How chic!

So what's the point of flashing my humiliating pictures for all to see?  I think I'm projecting my high school fashion sense on to my poor Sweet Pea.  Here are a few pictures I took of her this week.  I noticed the similarity in fashion when I was going through some old pictures during my intensive, get organized campaign yesterday.

Hey, plaid just like me.  If only I could get that fine hair into a french braid.

Here's Sweet Pea decked out in whales.  You can't really see them in the picture, but she's covered.  She's checking out her boo-boo and her cool Dora band-aid.  I loved the whole whale theme in high school.  My favorite store was actually called "The Whale."  (It was actually the scene of my one and only shoplifting experience - purple Ralph Lauren crew socks - very embarrassing.)

Later on in high school, I started dating someone who was very into the punk scene.  I hope I don't start dyeing Sweet Pea's hair burgandy and dressing her in black (yes, I went from preppy to burgandy, spiky hair).

It does seem like Sweet Pea is coming up with her own twist on my past.  Last week, she insisted on this look:

Looks like she loves the bows just like her mama did!

I have to say I still lean toward the preppy.  I'm glad it's made a comeback the last few years. There are some big things going on here this summer.  (Is there a topic that isn't blogged about?)

Espadrilles, I've missed you!  I'm so happy you're back in style.

Links and excuses

I've been on some kind of cleaning/organizing/throwing stuff out binge lately.  Daddy-O is out tonight.  It's past 11:00pm and I just sat down.  I've been so busy that I haven't thought of anything I want to say.  Plus, lately I've been so enjoying reading all the blogs out there that I find myself at the end of the night with no Mama Spot post.

So, I thought I'd share a few things I came across today on the news and in blogland.

Before I became the cleaning freak that I've become in the past few weeks, I thought a Roomba might be the answer to my pet hair woes.  Check out the adventures of this Roomba in New York City.

While Daddy-O gave Sweet Pea breakfast, CNN kept talking about this.  It made me uncomfortable just watching the simulation (they wouldn't stop showing it).  Can you imagine traveling this way with a toddler in tow? The company is denying the story, but I'm buying it.

Yet another crib caught my attention.  This one is for the lower tech parents out there who want to save the earth.

I'm off to check out my Bloglines.  I just can't stop!!!

 

Hurt, hurt, hurt

It is just the worst feeling not to be able to fix something for your baby.  Sweet Pea scraped all the skin off of the top of her hand.  I'm not exactly sure how it happened.  Papa was here on Monday and it happened then, but he may not have noticed.  Poor thing woke up once already tonight and as soon as I walked in she said "hurt, hurt, hurt" and held out her little hand.  It's too big for a band-aid and I want it to get some air so it will heal. 

We may try to get her first hair cut tomorrow.  She is all about the mullet right now.  It was absolutely freezing today and rainy, so I pulled out a few hand-me-downs from her cousin that probably won't fit by the time it gets cold again.  She wore the cutest little plaid skirt and red sweater to our Bubbles class today.  Her hair was in little pigtails. If I do say so myself, she looked so cute.  Until she pulled the pigtails out.  The mullet with pigtail marks is not such a great look.  I mean, I still think she's adorable, but she won't be on the cover of Cookie sporting hair like that.

Shopping

I've mentioned more than a few times that I have not really been at my fashion forward best lately.  I honestly haven't bought much in the way of warm weather clothes since before I was pregnant with Sweet Pea.  I didn't really lose my baby weight until right before Sweet Pea turned one and happily, now I'm about 10 pounds under my pre-pregnancy weight.

The only clothes that I have that come close to fitting are from five years ago.  Not only do I have no interest in the shorter shorts, etc., that I wore then, the few things that fit are hopelessly out of style.  The worst part is that I have no idea what IS in style now. 

So, Daddy-O suggested that we have a shopping day and that I get one of the free personal shoppers from Nordstrom to help me figure out what the heck the cool moms are wearing.

We scheduled it for last Thursday.  I was kind of nervous beforehand.  I'm not sure quite why, but I was a little intimidated.  When we got there, Daddy-O went to the second floor to get the personal shopper.  I had a picture of what she might look like.  Her name sounded kind of French and sophisticated.

I pictured her looking like this:

or maybe this:














I caught sight of Daddy-O and the woman who was supposed to make me hip & hot coming down the escalator.  NOT quite what I had in mind . . . more of a hmmmmm. . . Julia Child look-alike. 

She was wearing little tennis shoes, limping pretty badly and I wouldn't have put her in the fashionable dressed category.  It was all I could do not to look at Daddy-O because I would have started laughing or maybe crying.  She seemed nice though, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt. 

Turns out she was pretty good.  It took a little while to get in sync, but once we did she picked some pretty good things.  I looked mostly at their private label stuff with a few designers thrown in.  There was no pressure to buy and she definitely wanted me to be happy.

I came away with some good buys and a great start on my new wardrobe - a few pairs of summer pants, a few dresses, some basics like t-shirts and a few fun things.  It was really fun and it was nice having Daddy-O there to make me feel like I looked good. 

There were a few odd things about Julia.  One dress I tried on pretty much ruled out any kind of bra, so I asked her what I should do about it.  She said that during the summer, her rule is as little underneath as possible.  Go ahead, look at the picture of Julia holding up that fish again.  Now, imagine her with nothing on underneath.  Exactly.  It's a picture I just can't get out of my head.  Ick.  And, she kept saying it!

All in all, I highly recommend it if you're looking to change your wardrobe.  Their private label stuff is very reasonable - for example, the t-shirts were around $20 and they fit really well. 

I ran across a few quotes while I was looking for a picture of Julia Child. 

"Drama is very important in life.  You have to come on with a bang.  You never want to go out with a whimper."

"Find something you're passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it."

"It's fun to get together and have something good to eat at least once a day.  That's what human life is all about -- enjoying things."

 

She may not have looked like a model, but she knew how to live.

cool or creepy?

One of the things I loved about being pregnant was checking out all the great baby gear.  Unfortunately (for me, probably not Daddy-O) I had a lot of hand me downs from my sister, so I didn't need much of it.  I loved looking though.  Since my sister is pregnant, I've been occassionally cruising the baby gear sites again.  It's amazing in the two years since Sweet Pea was born, there so much new stuff out there. 

Check this crib out.  It seems kind of creepy to me, but maybe that's just because it's different.  It kind of reminds me of one of those little boxes they put mice in when they conduct those little tests.  Thank godness, it's not a toddler bed or I might spend hours trying to figure out if it's the next big thing.

No raves for Julia

I  am not a huge Julia Roberts fan or anything, but I like the way she stays under the radar.  She isn't one of those celebrities who say they want to be left alone, yet do things that bring out the paparazzi in droves.  So I feel badly for her that she seems to be getting early slams on her Broadway debut.

CNN.com - Julia draws bad reviews for B'way debut - Apr 20, 2006.

Luckily, I won't lose any sleep over it since I'm already an insomniac. 

Neighbor date

So much has transpired in neighbor-land.  Yesterday when we were out on the swingset, Neighbor asked if we wanted to come over for drinks tonight.  Yay!  We're in.  Actually, I was totally normal.  Not too high school.  We had a great time.  I didn't drink too much out of nervousness and we got home at a relatively early hour - not too early, not too late.  They had us and three doors down neighbors over.  It was nice enough that we could sit on the deck.  We had a lot to talk about and there wasn't too much of that uncomfortable "I don't know what to say next" feeling.  Three doors down neighbor and her husband seem really nice too.  She seems almost like the mayor of Bucktown because she knows everything about everyone around here.  We got all kinds of good dirt history on the whole neighborhood. 

Now that we're getting in on things, I'm lstarting to love the suburban feel of the new place.  Hopefully, we don't blow it.  Daddy-O can get a little fed up with the whole scene, so hopefully he stays nice.

Way off topic, we re-stained our deck and so, Charlie couldn't go up the stairs outside until the paint dried.  She wouldn't even come up on the inside from the basement to the first floor.  What is up with that dog?  I can kind of understand the open steps.  It's a little scary when you can see through them (even though Sweet Pea has no problem), but the basement stairs???  They're solid wood.  This dog - she is going to drive me crazy.  On a positive note, after the stain dried, she did go up the stairs near the garage.  There are five or six of them and they are open.  We've had then covered with old rugs, but thought we'd try it without.  She did it.  Baby steps, right?

Happy Weekend!

Mommy Wars Again -

Do you ever do things just to prove that your first impression was right on?  I keep reading this woman - Leslie Morgan Steiner.  I won't link to her blog because I don't want to increase her standing.  Here, though, is an article she wrote for the Washington Post.  She pretends to throw her arms up in dismay about this whole Mommy War thing, yet her comments are so incendiary.  Is she just trying to get people to comment?  How is what she's saying helping anything?  I won't even start on her attitude that the only way that you can change the world is to having a paying job.  There's plenty that bugged me more in her article.

From the first paragraph (which I'm pretty sure she just made up - whose neighbor is so insensitive that they would respond that way to a working mother?), she forces this "war" on her readers.  I just don't know anyone who is actually living this war. I have friends who work who've said insensitive things, but maybe I'm just sensitive.  I'm sure I have inadvertently said things to my friends who work that bothered them.  I promise you I didn't mean to.  But, the idea that we're at war and more importantly that we're TRYING to put down each other's choices - it just doesn't happen to anyone I know. 

"I don't often have ironed clothes and blow-dried hair on the same day. I could store my three kids' winter clothes in the bags under my eyes."

This seems to be a common theme for people promoting the "war" - they look crappy.  Guess what?  I stay at home and I look crappy a lot of the time too.  Recently, I showered once in 6 days.  How sexy is that? 

"Wouldn't we be far better off if we accepted and supported all good, if disparate, mothering choices? Aren't moms ultimately united in our quest to stay sane, raise good kids, provide each other with succor and support, and protect humankind from the overly aggressive, overly logical male half of the species?"

I'll leave the discussion of her low opinion of men and particularly, fathers, to Rebel Dad.

I'm more interested in why she asks these questions when she so frequently fans the flames. 

There is no good reason for working moms to treat stay-at-home mothers like dirt (invisible dirt but dirt nonetheless). Working moms might conceivably be grateful to moms who stay home and run our schools, our communities, a good chunk of our kids' worlds. At-home moms might arguably appreciate the working moms staying late to get the big promotions, fighting to increase women's presence on company boards and the front page of the Wall Street Journal and campaigning to win elections. Without the money, the power and the loudspeaker that successful careers bring, women will never have the collective bargaining power to make the world better for ourselves, our children and all the women who can't leave abusive husbands, the ones who wear veils, the moms who earn less than minimum wage cleaning houses and don't have choices about birth control or prenatal care or any other kind of care."

Seriously, does she see the world as this black and white?  There are plenty of volunteers out there, including both working moms, stay-at-home moms, dads, and EVEN single people who have impacted the world.  She talks on her blog and in other articles I've read about how this "war" exists because we are all so insecure with our choices.  When I read her, I keep thinking that this has to be her problem.  The grandiose impact that she gives to working mothers.  I mean, come on, are most mothers working because they want to improve collective bargaining power for their children?  No, most people are working because that's how they get by.  The people involved in this so-called war are people who have choices. 

Finally, this comment is what really made me decide to blog about this:

What puzzles me is that despite the fact that I've crafted a pretty ideal work/family situation, at times I'm still envious of the trust stay-at-home moms seem to have in their husbands and in life, a breezy Carol Brady confidence that they will always be taken care of. Some days I'd kill for a dose of their faith that neither my husband nor life will leave me stranded, destitute, unable to protect myself and my children without the independence conferred by a job and paycheck of my own."

How condescending is this?  I don't have a breezy Carol Brady confidence that I will always be taken care of.  My eyes are open.  Just because I stay home doesn't mean I suddenly became stupid and naive.  I wasn't whisked back to a different decade.  Of course, I worry about bad things happening.  I hope it doesn't, but I can't live my life thinking that it might.  The choice that I made to stay home was right for me and for my family.  If it turns out to hurt me, I'll deal with it when it happens.  This paragraph just pisses me off. 

Okay, I'm done venting.  Thank you Internet for giving me a place to say my peace.