What's for Supper {pt. 3}

Linking up with Simcha Fisher.

Let's pretend that I actually planned our meals this week instead of what I really did, which was wing it with whatever needed to be used up out of the fridge.

Saturday
Despite our resolutions to junk our collapsing gas grill, a half-full tank of propane is a terrible thing to waste. More grilled chicken + barbecue sauce, pasta e olio, and nuked frozen veggies.

Sunday
Mr. Husband was working another late shift. Incidentally, we had a repeat of Friday's dinner, which was macaroni and cheese. I tried to alleviate the shame of my utter laziness by adding a few things from the refrigerator that really needed to be used up: spinach and bacon. Fancy schmancy.

Monday
At 1 PM, I realized that not only did I not have a dinner plan, but I had to be out of the door by 6:30 to get to my first orchestra rehearsal of the season. I made Two-Ingredient Crockpot Chicken with rice and broccoli. We were actually out of salad dressing, but I found a 1/3 full can of pizza sauce in the fridge that did the job nicely.

Tuesday
A red bell pepper in the fridge and a can of Ro-Tel in the pantry inspired me to improvise a Tex-Mex -ish chicken stir-fry. I cubed some boneless skinless chicken breasts, browned them in a pan, added chopped pepper and onion, then the Ro-Tel, heaped on cumin and chili powder, and served it over rice. It came out better than I thought it would.

Wednesday
Meatballs. My half-Italian heritage seems to come with a biological imperative that I make this dish at least once a month or I'll crave it constantly. That being said, based on what was in my pantry and the perfectly-browned-in-the-pan-meatballs gene skipping a generation, I had to deviate from the old family recipe.

Instead of using flavored bread crumbs, I pulverized our freezer cache of hamburger and hot dog buns.

Instead of pan-searing or broiling the meatballs briefly, I cooked them most of the way in the oven.

If I don't do this, my meatballs fall apart and my kids learn new four-letter words they shouldn't know.

I cooked the sauce separately and added the meatballs at the very end. Nobody complained.

Buon appetito.

Thursday
I tried to have an off week from it, but then some last-minute company had me resort to it. P I Z Z A. It's an easy way feed a bunch of people because it's easy to make, inexpensive, and everybody likes it. Including Sir Toddler, who is auditioning to be the next Little Ceasars guy.*

Friday
Enchiladas. I know, I know. They've been on every link-up. But I had decided a month ago to deliver an enchilada meal to a friend who's just had a baby, and the day for that was yesterday. So now I'm in the mood for them again.



*We took him to Uno's once and ordered him a kids' pizza. He ate all but one slice. HE'S TWO. The pizza was bigger than his head.

Birth Story: Sir Toddler

In the spirit of Throwback Thursday, I'll join the ranks of many mom bloggers and post a birth story. And like the fangirl I am, I'm linking up with bigger and better blogs--today, Camp Patton.

Sir Toddler’s birth story comes with a small amount of necessary exposition. To start, the hospital where I was planning to deliver was by far not the closest to our home. It was close to where I worked. My husband and I were planning on finding out the sex of our child at 20 weeks. However, Sir Toddler did not cooperate at my fetal survey ultrasound, remaining stubbornly cross-legged for the whole procedure. I was convinced, although not committed, that we were expecting a baby girl.

Four days before my due date, on Marathon Monday/Patriot’s Day in New England, I decided to go for a walk to see if I could get labor started. I managed to induce some mild Braxton-Hicks, but I decided to just give up and walk home when I got a phone call from my husband. He’d been watching the Boston Marathon on TV and saw the bombs go off. I hurried home and we watched the news coverage in shock. The rest of that day is a blur to me, except I voiced aloud to my husband my reluctance to go to work the next day.

I woke up at 4:00 AM, with contractions much more intense than any I’d experienced. Was this really happening?! I timed the contractions for an hour before waking up Mr. Husband. We called my OB-GYN practice endured 30 minutes of the ridiculously complicated phone triage system before we were told to time the contractions for another hour and call back. By the time I got through with the second phone call, we were both up and showered. The contractions were starting to hurt my lower back and we were nearing rush hour. “Are you ready to come to the hospital?” asked the nurse on call. Yes! Please.

Off we drove to the hospital, as I made all of the necessary phone calls to inform my employer. The midwife who checked me declared me 1 cm dilated, and sent us out for a walk. It was a warm, sunny spring day, marking the beginning of the short window in which New England has enviably beautiful weather. However, I was distracted by pain radiating around my legs with each contraction. Despite our best efforts to help things along, I did not progress and we were sent home.

I did everything I could to ease the pain of the contractions. I tried to nap, but I woke up every five minutes with each contraction. Taking a warm bath provided some relief, but our cramped bathroom space wasn’t the most comfortable. I tried to eat, but didn’t have much appetite for anything besides peanut butter on graham crackers. Mr. Husband and I worked our way through episodes of Justified as contractions continued to intensify, and a few less savory labor signs made their appearance. The nurses on the phone suggested we make another venture to the hospital before afternoon rush hour began.

This drive was considerably less comfortable than the last. I was relieved to find out in triage that I had progressed to 4 cm and could be admitted. I gowned up just long enough to get me to my room and take a picture, and spent the next hour in the shower.

When I couldn’t bear the steam any longer, I tried walking around to help with the pain in my legs and lower back, but it was unbearable. The nurse who checked my progress said that Sir Toddler was occiput posterior (face-up), and I was still at 4 cm. It was at that point that Mr. Husband convinced me that I needn’t be a martyr, and I asked for the epidural.

When the anesthesiologist arrived at around 6 PM, they asked Mr. Husband to leave, and suggested that he order dinner before the cafeteria closed. I asked him to order for me too, but they told me, “No food with the epidural!” (I wish I had known that beforehand, because I was ready to eat my own arm!) I got the epidural and accompanying IVs, and then settled in bed with completely numb legs. I spent the next few hours sleeping and being turned from side to side to convince Sir Toddler to flip to a face-down position, while my husband tried to sleep and watched the Red Sox lose spectacularly. At some point, my water broke, which was a very strange sensation. Around 12:45 AM, I woke up and suspected that I was complete. The nurse who came in confirmed my suspicions, and off we went a-pushing.

This part of childbirth in movies is a crazy intense-a-thon of screaming and sweating and doctors scurrying around, but my experience with Sir Toddler was very relaxing. Mr. Husband and I chatted with the nurse, and in between pushing she had me breathe through an oxygen mask. At about 1:20, Sir Toddler was just about ready to arrive. More nurses poured in to warm blankets, set up a mirror, and the OB-GYN, a slim young woman with a nose piercing, rushed in and saw me pushing. 

“Blow this one out!” she said.

Mr. Husband remarked, “It has to be a girl! Look at all that hair!”

“One more push to deliver,” and suddenly they lay a very slimy and confused looking baby on my stomach. The baby had a FULL head of hair, a cone-shaped head and… 

“It’s a boy!”

“What do you think you’ll name him?” asked the doctor.

I grinned and looked at my husband as I rattled off this brand-new boy’s name. He settled onto my chest and stopped crying. After a blur of stitches (ugh), cord clamping, weighing, measuring, and his first meal, Sir Toddler was wheeled off to the nursery with Mr. Husband for his first bath. I was left alone to eat my sandwich (the most satisfying hospital meal I’ve ever had, I was so hungry!), the nurse helped me into the wheelchair (which was hilarious because she was my size and I couldn’t feel, let alone move, my legs) and I was reunited with Sir Toddler in my new hospital room.

As it turned out, the nurse in the post-delivery wing was the mother of my husband’s classmate’s roommate (say that five times fast), so she “got us the room with the best view!” At this point, it was about 2 AM. My husband and I settled in to try to sleep, although I woke up every time Sir Toddler breathed with any noise, paranoid that he would die of SIDS. We were exhausted, but so full of joy. After all of the tragedy we had seen two days before, we had witnessed a miracle.

Beware of Toddler

Schedules, rhythms, routines, seasons. They were part of my life as a teacher. Motherhood has its rhythms and seasons as well, but routines are unpredictable. As much as classroom teaching was subject to changes based on the varying needs of my growing students, life with small kids is volatile.

If I'd written this post a few days ago, I would have mentioned how Sir Toddler was reaching a happy medium. He's no longer waking up in tears in the middle of the night. He has started napping in his bed, or, if not napping, at least sitting quietly. He's always had a cheerful disposition and for the last year and a half has had an impressive obedient streak for his age. When we went to the playground on Monday, he didn't shy away from the other kids but charmed several school-age children into playing with him (the public schools were out for Rosh Hashanah). I pushed Lady Infant in the swing, chatted with my fellow playgroup moms, and was reveling in reaching the stage where I could more or less let my son play independently on the structures.

Then he fell down the steps and banged his head on the baby-sized structure. I didn't even notice the enormous goose egg welling up on his brow at first because his hat obscured it. (Fortunately, apart from an ugly bruise, he is ok!) Yesterday and today Sir Toddler has had some ugly tantrums over the most mundane things...being forced to choose his snack from what we actually had in the pantry, not wanting to go for a stroller ride (usually one of his favorite things), and not being allowed to play with the trucks at Target because we were pressed for time.

(I bought him a cheapity cheap truck ONCE. For the beach. Two months ago.)

It was an awful moment for everyone (except for Lady Infant, who is usually the fussy party). I wanted to melt into the ground while I pushed my sobbing, screaming, flailing toddler, still sporting his shiner from the playground, to the checkout, braving the palpable discomfort of the other shoppers and employees. I felt like I should have been wearing a T-shirt that said, "I didn't hit my kid! He's usually really good at the store! Please don't judge me!" But there was nothing I could do except ignore him and get through the checkout as quickly as possible.

Indeed it was an awful moment. But it was just a moment. He was over it by the time we got to the car. I'll probably see more public displays of Sir Toddler's burgeoning temper as he learns to communicate his feelings, manage his emotions, and come to terms with a world where he can't get everything he wants. That season has its limit and he'll eventually outgrow these tantrums (I hope!). At the same time, this season I'm also seeing his ability to put together sentences, have short conversations, remember the words to songs and sing snippets independently, and occasionally play with his baby sister. This season, he loves to give me unsolicited hugs and kisses, tells me I'm pretty, and asks me to sing his favorite songs to him. And that season has its limits, too.

Being a parent of small children is hard. It was hard with one baby. It was hard with one toddler. It is hard with a toddler and a baby, and from my brief glimpse into teaching adolescents, I know parenting will still be hard with teenagers. I certainly don't consider myself an expert on parenting, and you won't catch me telling a mom with a screaming baby, "Enjoy them while they're little!"

All I can do is try to get through the bad parts of the season, and savor the good. Because the season won't last.