Last week I went back to work with Felix in tow. I was really eager to get back. I am a better mom when I have time away from my toddler. I really like my job, and I genuinely missed my weeks away from the office. That probably seems crazy to some people, but there you have it. As a rule I do better at motivating myself around the house when I have my for-pay job to do. I'm not sure why that is, but it gives me enough stuff on my plate to get me going on the mom and wife stuff that needs to be done.
Felix has done really well in the office. He is as sweet and amiable as Ike was, and I'm insanely grateful I get to take him to work. I love that he and I get to have these few days of just the two of us, just like I had with Ike. It's the closest I'll get to having a first-child experience with my second child, and I get to have it because of my job. Who would have guessed?
I have a rewards credit card with Southwest Airlines. A few weeks ago I got a call from the airline asking if I'd purchased tickets for November 5. In fact, I had. But the employee then wanted to verify the names on the tickets, and no, those were not mine and Eric's names at all. He then told me the charges, and no, that was definitely not us. So he canceled the charges.
I went ahead and called the credit card company to ask if I should get a new card or what the next step would be. The employee told me that I was absolutely welcome to have new cards issued. However, it was possible that whoever purchased those tickets maybe just miskeyed their own credit card number and we wouldn't have any more repeats of incorrect charges. She said that if it were her, she'd have the cards replaced, but ultimately it was my decision.
I didn't want to memorize a new card number, and I keep up with the charges on our card very regularly, so I figured I'd wait it out to see if there were anymore fraudulent charges.
Sadly, there were some more erroneous charges today, for a different airline, charging about $1400. I've ordered new cards.
Now I have to memorize a new credit card number. Everything about getting the charges removed has been so simple, and I have no complaints there. But memorizing a 16-digit number and 3-digit security code and new expiration date? Such a pain. Darn criminals.
I'm sure you'll all be devastated if we take a break from the never ending election discussion to instead discuss that my baby is one month old today.
I never thought it would be possible to have a baby easier than Ike, but apparently it is. Felix is just super easy. Once we got past the first week or so of life, he became a much better eater. He is a great sleeper. Most nights he sleeps in four hour blocks. It's glorious and totally manageable.
While we visited my family this weekend there were many comments about how serious Felix is. He usually has a very serious expression, which I think is caused primarily by his frequently furrowed brow. It's adorable and adds to the old-man look that most babies have anyway.
He is a really cuddly baby and loves to sleep on my chest - something that Ike never did. I love to hold him, and he loves to be held. (And yet he's usually okay if I put him down, so that's nice too.)
Felix is really strong. He can often hold his head up for a moment or two at a time. It's wobbly, but he can do it off and on for several minutes. I think part of the reason he is strong is that he is tiny and doesn't have a lot of head to hold up. Even at one month old his 0-3 month clothes are still huge on him, and he wears pretty much exclusively newborn clothes still. I'm perfectly happy to get as much wear from those clothes as possible.
I am very much looking forward to seeing how this mellow little baby's personality develops and seeing what role he plays in our family. Adjusting to having another person in our family has been as seamless as you can imagine, and I'm really grateful for that.
I wasn't smart enough to make food in advance of Ike's birth. I gained some IQ points in between his and Felix's births, though. This time I did a bit of food prep, and it made my post-baby life much easier.
For the most part, I didn't cook many meals that went straight into the freezer for later use. Instead, I froze leftovers. This did mean that in the few weeks leading up to Felix's birth I was more likely to have peanut butter sandwiches for lunch instead of leftovers, but it was well worth it when all I had to do was thaw and warm up food for dinner while holding a newborn in my arms and trying to negotiate with a hungry and cranky toddler. (Why is dinner time so difficult?)
Here are a few meals that I made and froze the leftovers:
Crockpot Sweet Potato and Blackbean Soup from Everyday Reading - We didn't lovelovelove this when we had it the first time, but we did like it. I liked the leftovers a little better, and I do think this soup will be added to my list of go-to crockpot meals. It's really nutritious and cheap.
Vietnamese Pork Meatballs from Girl Cooks World - We didn't really care for these the first time, and we weren't crazy about the leftovers either. I made them because I was looking for a way to use some ground pork I had, and I love Vietnamese meatballs. They weren't bad, but they also didn't make the make-again cut.
Tortilla soup from Zupas - Okay, I didn't make this. Eric brought home a fairly large container from a work meeting, and it went straight into the freezer. We had this the other night, and I added a little bit to it from things I already had at home. Honestly, we both prefer my tortilla soup, but this was free and easy.
And here were the few that I made for the purpose of going into the freezer. (All of these came from Mel's Kitchen Cafe because she has a link with a whole bunch of her make-ahead meals. I'd made a few of her things before, so I felt like I could trust these recipes. Most of them are not strictly make-and-freeze meals, so I had to make a few adjustments here and there.)
Creamy White Chili from Mel's Kitchen Cafe - I actually went with the crock pot version of this recipe, but I froze the ingredients first. I wanted something where I wouldn't have to shop for ingredients or anything. I just wanted to dump the already mixed ingredients in and forget about it. It was really good, and will definitely make the winter dinner rotation.
Plus, we had meals brought in from neighbors, Eric's mom and Eric's grandma. We haven't starved, and it's been lovely.
I am not crazy about Halloween. (As I have mentioned the last twoyears.) I rarely dress up, and I don't get the big deal. But this year is different. This year I have a toddler who is capable of understanding the concept of Halloween. Last year we dressed Ike up as a monkey. We got the costume at a yard sale for very cheap, but we didn't go to any Halloween parties or take him trick-or-treating or anything. It would have been way over his head. He looked adorable in his monkey costume, and we were glad we bought it, but in general there wasn't anything particularly thrilling about Halloween with a non-walker and non-talker.
I saw a pattern for a crochet sock monkey hat on Pinterest, and I knew that this year my boys would be sock monkeys. I whipped up Felix's hat very quickly. He is a newborn, and he doesn't really have opinions. If he doesn't like his sock monkey hat, he has no way of expressing that sentiment. Plus, he lacks the coordination to take his hat off.
Ike, on the other hand -
Well, Ike doesn't really like to wear his sock monkey hat. He likes the idea of the sock monkey hat, but getting him to wear the hat has been a challenge. I've taken to bribing him with candy to get him to wear it. I don't like bribery as a parenting method, but I figure for a Halloween costume, it's okay. After all, the whole point of wearing a Halloween costume is to get candy.
Seinfeld has said it best. (You can watch the whole thing, or you could stop at about 1:10, since that is where the relevance to this blog post ends.)
On Saturday our city hosted a little Halloween activity at a local park. A whole bunch of local businesses came and passed out fliers for grownups and candy for children. Ike very quickly picked up on the concept. He didn't say "trick or treat" (or anything remotely resembling the phrase). Instead, he just walked up to the people with the big bowls and said, "candy." He was hit or miss with saying "thank you" on his own. Most of the time I had to remind him, and usually he was so excited about having another piece of candy that it took him a moment to thank the appropriate person. Several times he just thanked whoever was standing closest to him, regardless of the age of that person.
I wasn't able to get a great picture of Ike on Saturday. He was so excited he just couldn't be still. These two are the best I have so far, and they should give you an idea of his costume.
The hat was definitely the most elaborate part, and even then it was a simple pattern. The pants and shirt are just gray sweats. I used some plain white material to trim the arms and legs like a sock monkey. And because I wanted to still be able to use the sweats in the future, I did not sew on the trim. Instead I used double-sided tape. That's just how crafty I am.
We don't own this game, but we have basically stolen it from Eric's dad. We love it.
Pandemic is a different strategic board game than most. It's different because it's collaborative rather than competitive. Either everyone wins, or everyone loses.
The idea is that there are four diseases breaking out around the world. The players must prevent the diseases from outbreaking and try to cure each disease, by collecting city cards. These city cards can also be used to travel and build research stations (which are necessary to cure the diseases and are vital to traveling around the world.) Each of the players has a specific role that gives him certain special powers in addition to the basic powers that each player has. After each turn, the diseases grow in a few cities, so it's often a matter of two steps forward, one step back. Every so often an epidemic card pops up, and that adds a whole new city to the mix and increases the rate of disease growth, thus intensifying the challenges in the game.
One of the things I love about this game is that you can adjust the difficulty level within each game. Usually when we are playing with new people we'll make the game easier, but when we play by ourselves we make it as challenging as possible. Also, the roles are assigned randomly, so each game can have a different combination of special powers for the players. This adds a fun dynamic and means the players have to adjust the strategy for each game.
There is an expansion pack, and it provides several different ways to change the game. We've played the game with a couple of the expansion options, but mostly we are happy to play the traditional game over and over and over again.
And one final note. This game makes me want to travel. It's a little counter-intuitive, because why should I want to travel to these disease-filled cities? But, I do. It's doubly-odd that this game makes me want to travel even more than Ticket to Ride, which is a game that is far more about traveling than Pandemic.
Last week I went back to work with Felix in tow. I was really eager to get back. I am a better mom when I have time away from my toddler. I really like my job, and I genuinely missed my weeks away from the office. That probably seems crazy to some people, but there you have it. As a rule I do better at motivating myself around the house when I have my for-pay job to do. I'm not sure why that is, but it gives me enough stuff on my plate to get me going on the mom and wife stuff that needs to be done.
