THE GREEN(wald) HOUSE … (growing rosemary & raising a little wolf)

While shopping at the new Nordstrom store near my house a few weeks ago - I was pleasantly surprised to discover this sign in the ladies room:

This was the result of a contest sponsored by Mothering.com not too long ago to try to find a universal symbol for breastfeeding mothers. Frustrated by the fact that most mother’s rooms are designated by a bottle - as seen below (also at the same Nordstrom) - Mothering magazine (and the website) wanted a symbol that would promote and encourage breastfeeding and have a universally recognizable symbol to signify an area for mothers and their children.

I was familiar with the contest and loved the winning design, but this is the first time I have seen the image used in real life. The winner has signed this symbol over to public domain - so hopefully more and more businesses and public areas will be posting this icon and we will be seeing the symbol used more often than the bottle symbol to represent the feeding of a baby.

Speaking of breastfeeding - as I continue to extoll the benefits of breastfeeding in my daily life (to anyone who will listen), and in the interest of putting my money where my mouth is (so to speak - actually it is where Sammy’s mouth is) I have decided to become a breastmilk donor. Since Sam is starting to eat more solids, and I have an abundant milk supply and I am lucky enough that breastfeeding came easily to me, I am going to be sharing that goodness with premature babies and other critically ill babies in desperate need of the best nutrition, the nutrition that only breastmilk can provide.

I would encourage other lactating mommies out there to do the same - the company I am using is Milkin’ Mamas - but you can go to www.milkbanking.net to see how you can become a donor.

Breast is best!

Wow - Three years ago today - I became a mommy. Well, not really. I was always a mommy - I was just waiting for my kids to arrive. I never imagined that motherhood would be so great, so fulfilling, so exciting, yet so boring, so frustrating, so challenging and so unbelievably tiring all at the same time…

Rosie has been a bit of a handful lately (to put it mildly). She is definitely asserting her independence. She wants to make her own decisions, and we usually give her the freedom to choose her clothes, shoes, meals, what the activities of the day are (within limits), etc. Somehow, that is not enough anymore. Most of my questions, comments, and instructions are met with a bratty “NO!” these days.

Oh the patience it takes to stay sane. 8am Mama is a completely different person from 8pm Mama.

8am Mama starts the day off so patient and waits for Rosie’s slow-as-molasses walking, takes time to make sure she is engaged in whatever activity she wants - especially when traveling in the car, picking up whatever toys she has dropped (repeatedly), reads the same books over and over, doesn’t complain when she gets 10 different cups out of the cabinet and fills each one up with an inch of water and spills water all over the ground, patiently cleans up the spilled water along with the microscopic bits of paper from when she uses her scissors to cut up her coloring book, then calmly takes the scissors out of Sammy’s mouth while gently reminding her that I didn’t want her to use scissors when Sammy was awake.

On the other hand - 8pm Mama tends to say “come ON Rosie - hurry up” when we are walking somewhere, brusquely tosses toys her way with instructions to stop dropping them, refuses to read books more than once (and has been known to skip several pages to expedite the process), exasperatedly sighs “aaaargh” when cleaning up the mess from several cups half filled with water, yells “I TOLD you no cutting right now” while grumbling about cleaning up paper and how dangerous scissors are.

On more than one occasion, I know I have muttered something about “driving me crazy” which I didn’t realize Rosie heard until she repeated her version of that phrase to me last weekend. I think Rosie was trying to listen to music in the car and Joe and I were having a conversation and laughing - and Rosie instructed us to “stop laughing” and we said “why do you want us to stop laughing?” and Rosie replied “Because you are making me drive crazy”.

She just got her first “official” haircut last Friday - just to trim and even things up (as all I ever really did was trim her bangs and the back to eliminate her mullet look) and her curls are even more evident now. Everywhere we go, people comment on her hair - calling her “curly girl” “goldilocks” etc. The barista at the Starbucks drive-thru said “her hair is so gorgeous - those curls - is it natural?”. I wanted to say - “Nah - I gave her a perm”….

She loves to laugh, sing, dance, play with bubbles, splash in the kiddie pool, play on the swingset, play in the sandbox, go for walks, go to the park, go to the zoo, go to the library. She is a non-stop bundle of energy. She loves to get her fingernails and toenails painted and she is very good at staying “still like a statue” until they dry. She loves to put lotion on and will go through a whole tub of lotion, greasing up her entire body if I would let her. She still wants to wear dresses every day - the fancier the better. Usually I have to convince her to wear shorts underneath, or “park pants” as we are frequently at parks - sliding or doing activities that require some sort of leg/bottom covering.

I watched her sleep the other morning, and I was amazed by her long legs, splayed out across her big bed, looking at her long, lean body - and thinking “wow - that body, that little person grew inside me”. I can hardly remember how it felt to hold her newborn body in my arms. When did she become a child? I can’t believe she is already 3 years old. It seems like just yesterday that she was born, yet I feel like she has always been in my life. It is that weird motherhood time warp where time seems to go by so quickly, yet slowly at the same time.

Happy Birthday my precious, sweet Rosemary. I love you so much!

Samuel Arthur Wolf is one year old. I can’t believe it. My sweet baby came into this world- on the floor of my bathroom - with a loud grunt/scream and a HUUUUUUUUGE push - in the wee hours of the morning - one year ago today.

He has changed so much just in the last few weeks. When I look at him, I can see flashes of what he will look like as a young boy, as a teenager, as an adult, and I have almost cried several times in the past week just thinking about his future and how fast he is growing up.

Aside from walking all the time, he is now consistently saying “mama”. He really is a mama’s boy (and has the shirt to prove it). Sometimes it drives me crazy though, when he screams at the top of his lungs if I dare take 2 steps away from him, or go in the other room. He is not talking much other than Dada, Mama, and Dat - everything else is “dat”. I have still been trying sign language with him, though my efforts are sporadic. I know a lot of his fussiness is from his inability to communicate, so hopefully he will catch on to the signs, or start really talking soon so he (and I) can be less frustrated.

He is such a stereotypical boy. He loves to bang things together, open and close doors, scoot cars across the floor, and fit things into other things. He is constantly trying to figure out how things work and he gets so excited and laughs and squeals and claps when he is in the midst of another discovery. He also loves to climb stairs, and he makes a bee-line to any stairs he sees. When we are home, as soon as he hears the gate we have on our stairs open or close, he runs over and grabs onto the bars like a prisoner and screams and whines until we open the gate for him and let him climb up and down the stairs for a bit. He’s actually very good at climbing up and going down. He knows that he has to go down on his belly - feet first.

His body has changed a lot just in the last month. Now that he is walking he has slimmed down a ton. He is no longer my super chunky babe - though he still has enough chubbiness to squeeze and cuddle. His body is longer and leaner and his face is less round.

I have to admit, when I first looked down between his legs a few minutes after he was born (what is that squishy thing?) I was unsure of what to do with a boy. A girl is easy - I know girl parts, I know how girls think and what girls want and need. But a boy is so … weird, so unfamiliar, so foreign. I was really kind of thinking that I couldn’t bond with and love a boy the way I could a girl. That seems so silly to me now.

Sammy is such a different baby from how Rosie was. He seems more cuddly, more needy, less independent, more emotional. He is also into everything - all the time - he is non-stop moving and grabbing and pulling. I am constantly saying “uh-uh - not for Sammy” as he reaches for Rosie’s scissors, or a plant, or the (now broken) DVD player. Rosie seemed easier to entertain, or maybe I am just having selective memory - or maybe it is the combination of Rosie and Sammy that is the hard thing.

I can barely remember how little he was at birth. I hold him now in my arms, all 25 lbs of him, legs hanging over the edge of the glider when we nurse, struggling to keep his big, squirmy body on my lap, and I really miss the tiny, fragile baby. But, I love the toddler, the little boy he has become and is becoming on a daily basis. His laughter brings me such joy. His smile, his neediness, his mischieviousness, it all makes me so proud to be his mama.

I love you my sweet boy. Happy, happy birthday.

For most of my teenage years, the weekends and after school hours from April to October were spent at the lake or in someone’s backyard - trying to achieve a perfect tan. This was a serious task. One could not make alternate plans during the hours of 10 and 2 (prime tanning hours) and there was a specific method of rotation to ensure even sides. My entire plans for a weekend could be nothing but “laying out”. My friend Holly (hey Sis H!) and I would actually climb up to her black shingled rooftop and bake our bodies with baby oil. The thinking was, that we would get tan faster if we could be even closer to the sun. My peachy complexion would always, always turn pink and burn before I could achieve a golden glow. I remember comparing my shade of “tan” to that of a fire-engine or lobster on more than one occasion. Luckily, I was also blessed (?) with oily skin, so the sun damage and sunburns usually would heal up pretty quickly with the extra oil and moisture my skin would produce.

Even today, I have very sensitive skin, even moreso than my kids. We can all be at a playdate at a park for a couple hours, sans sunscreen, and I am the only one who goes home with red shoulders and pink cheeks. Needless to say, my days of just lying in the sun for hours is over. So are my days of comparing tan lines with my girlfriends. That is, unless you count my feet.

In my new mommy life, I now have a sweet farmer tan. Or to be more precise, a mommy-playgroup tan. My face, shoulders, and arms are nice and brown, as are my feet - except for the lovely flip flop tan lines. My legs and mid-section are lily-white. If you looked at me naked in the dark and squinted - I am sure it would look like I was wearing a white tank top jumpsuit - capri length. Am I hot or what?
Hmm - maybe I need to branch out and wear something other than flip-flops on my feet one of these days…

Oh, and Happy Fourth of July y’all!