Better?

I guess Edie just had a fever for 24 hours? She's totally fine now. It never actually turned into a cold at all (knocking on wood). She slept well last night for the first time in.... FOREVER? I don't remember. It's amazing how different life feels with some rest.

Right now Edie is in bed alone, making weird car racing (and dramatic breaking) noises.

Also, tomorrow's my birthday.

Health

Well, last night blew, but not quite as hard as the night before. Edie's much better today, fever is under control and she appears to just have another cold. BORING.

Again

Edie appears to be sick again. We spent all day dosing her with Tylenol to keep her fever down to 101. Can hardly wait to see what the night has in store for us.

Boo.

Bob

Edie got a sassy new haircut last week and I haven't uploaded the best photos yet. This is just a mediocre cell phone shot after a nap - which made it way less cute than normal. But still - cute, no?

Nightmare

Edie woke from what was I think her first legit nightmare last night. After re-reading the Ferber sleep book in January, I realized that her freaked out wakings around 11pm couldn't possibly be nightmares. Toddler sleep cycles ensure that there really only are certain parts of the night in which nightmares CAN occur. This was incredibly enlightening. What I -vaguely- remember is that the most common times for nightmares are in the wee hours of the morning, like 2am until 5am. So when Edie woke last night around 4am totally wigging out, yelling "NO! NO!" like she was running from a grizzly bear, I raced into her room. I found her laying flat on her back in bed and when she saw me, she seemed terribly relieved. She said, "I don't WANT cheese Mom! I only wanted to go OUTSIDE!"

Sheesh. These are apparently the horrific nightmares of my 2 and a half year old: being forced to eat cheese and denied the opportunity to play outside.

I calmly explained that she didn't have to eat any cheese because it was the middle of the night and that we could go outside in the morning.

She seemed greatly relieved.

An actual email

Subject: Your New Favorite Website

Inbox

x

Jeff Culver	8:47 PM (34 minutes ago)
to me

http://onetinyhand.com/

And no, I can't explain it.

Brownie Cookies

OMG. These did NOT need to sit in the fridge for 2 hours. They are aMAYzing. Make them. Soon.

Fudgey Brownie Cookies

You will need:

• 1 package fudge/dark chocolate brownie mix
• 1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 stick butter, melted, cooled
• 2-3 tablespoons cold water
• 1 cup dark chocolate chunks (I used chocolate chips)

1. Whisk together flour, brownie mix and brown sugar.
2. Using a heavy spoon (I used the paddle attachment on my Kitchen Aid), stir in eggs one at a time. Followed by butter and 2 tablespoons water. If the batter appears like there is too much flour add 1 more tablespoon of water. Batter will be very thick.
3. Fold in chocolate chunks
4. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours (I skipped this step and just put the bowl in the fridge while the oven preheated)
5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
6. Grease a cookie sheet (don't skip this step!)
7. Drop heaping tablespoons of dough on the cookie sheet, you want pretty thick cookies here to get the brownie feel, about 3 inches apart. Press down slightly. Don’t flatten completely.(I rolled mine into balls and didn't press down and they turned out perfect) Bake for 8 minutes.
8. Remove from oven, allow to cool 2 minutes on cookie sheet. Transfer to cooling rack to cool completely - PSHAW! Eat immediately because the gooey centers are the best part.

Full disclosure - recipe found on http://www.lifesambrosia.com/

Thankfully for my current healthy lifestyle project, these are almost all going to a friend who recently had a baby - Hi Sarah! People who are getting no sleep and breastfeeding earn extra calories in the form of chocolate brownie cookies.

Carrot Cake Pancakes

You guys! All I want for my birthday is for someone to make these for me:

Carrot Cake Pancakes

Baking

Sometimes, do you start a recipe and about 20 minutes in find that step #10 is "Refrigerate for 2 hours" but you need the cookies to be done in 20 minutes?

Oops.

Accident

Edie and Jeff are building a Lego tower (with primary color duplos btw) when Edie gets mad and violently throws one of the legos at the couch.

Jeff: That was rude Edie.

Edie: Sorry Dad. It was an accident.

Jeff: Oh. Did you ACCIDENTALLY freak out and throw a Lego?

Edie: Um. Yeah.

Baby #2 (not for me)

Darrah had her second baby (boy) early this morning and named him Samuel Theodore. Not officially my news to share, but I've been getting asked quite a lot this week and thought I'd spread the happy news. It sounds as though everyone is healthy and happy - can't wait to meet him.

Letting Go

The last two weeks have been difficult ones. This business of having a 2 and a half year old is taking a toll on my spirit (and my face). I broke down two weeks ago and cried like a teenager. I poured my guts out to Jeff. I almost never feel the need for a good cry, but that day just pushed all my buttons and truthfully those buttons were worn down to little nubbins already.

When you're pregnant, older and wiser people (like my OBGYN) tell you that children teach you patience. They tell you that after raising children you will be a more flexible and patient person than you were to start with. I think "unflappable" was the word she used. I keep waiting for this to happen. Because if there was one word to describe me lately it would be flappable.

Edie is going through what I'm sure is a perfectly natural phase of learning her boundaries. And I sometimes feel like all that either of us says to each other all day long is "no".

Me: No please don't pour your milk on the floor. No you can't watch a video right now. No, you need to eat at the kitchen table. Please do NOT throw your things.

Edie: No, I don't want to wash my hands! No I don't want to go potty! No I don't want to put my pajamas on! No bath! No it's NOT bedtime!

Edie periodically refuses to nap these days. It's not common, but it happens just often enough to get a rise out of me. Recently, when she refused to nap after a failed attempt at "Quiet Time" (that I will not go into except to say that when I finally went into Edie's room I found her wearing a dirty pair of underwear over her pants, her pajama shirt instead of her normal shirt, every single book on her shelf pulled onto the floor and that's not even the HALF of it) I found myself furious. Not furious at Edie per se, more like furious at the world. I had been counting on that time to do SO MANY THINGS! Or at least that's what I told myself. In hindsight, I can't really remember all of the things I intended to do during that time. Regardless, none of them got done.

And it turns out that the world continued to turn. Despite the lack of "things" I got done that day. I think part of the reason the last two weeks have been so difficult for me (aside from the obvious flu and sleep deprivation) is because I am spending a lot of my energy FIGHTING my life. I'm planning too many things that are not guaranteed and then counting on them as if they are owed to me. And then I'm so angry when those things are taken from me.

I think I'm supposed to be spending more time welcoming the "whatever" and going with the flow. God that made me sound like a hippy. But for serious! I read this post on GirlsGoneChild recently and it really made an impact. If I spend all my time trying to make my time with Edie fit into a certain set of plans I made, I'm only asking for heartache when other things happen. Why am I fighting so hard against something I have so little control over? How do I learn to LET GO?

So Edie isn't going to take a nap today! So what? Make another plan, do something different.

At 1pm today - Edie's normal nap time - I decided I wasn't up for the Nap Time Fight. I zipped us up in our puffy coats and we walked up to the neighborhood coffee shop, just us girls. I had no expectations because we'd never done this before the two of us. At least not this particular coffee shop, which is typically filled with quiet adults working on computers and generally looking like they expect peaceful, zenlike environs that are not conducive to 2 year-olds. I ordered her a chocolate chip cookie the size of her head, a giant mug of milk and myself an afternoon latte. Edie read the children's books in a basket by the door for almost 2 hours with almost zero attention required by me. I read the paper. Sipped my latte. Felt at peace. It was an unexpected pocket of peace for us and we both enjoyed ourselves immensely. Edie took a lovely nap as soon as we came back home - without a fight.

I guess I thought that having children was going to magically make me into this more flexible person my OB spoke of. But it turns out that this is very hard work. Learning to release myself and my child from a list of expectations - for the day, the week, for always - is not a skill magically given to a person through the process of giving birth. And I'm not going to pretend that I'm grateful for the hard work it's taking me to gain this whole skill of Letting Go. The truth is I wouldn't mind if it was just handed down to me from some higher authority on Peace and Patience. I would totally not look that gift horse in the mouth. But this is looking less and less likely the older I get. Right?

I hesitate to say it

But I think the Culvers are finally coming back from the dead? To explain my absence of late:

It started at 2am on Sunday morning when Edie woke suddenly with a weird seal bark cough followed by dramatic gasping. Then ended as quickly as it started when she fell back to sleep 2 minutes later. Except I was awake for another hour waiting for my heart rate to slow enough to sleep again.

On Sunday she woke with a regular old cough (not croup as I'd feared in the night), and I started the day with an upset stomach and nausea. By bedtime Edie was a coughing mess with low grade fever and I was stuck in the bathroom feeling sick to my stomach with a flu bug of some sort. It was a long night. And a longer week. Everything's fine now, but just two days ago, things were feeling bleak as I experienced a flare up of my ancient jaw pain problem that hasn't resurfaced in years (result of stress and sleeplessness). Pair that with my lingering flu and a little anxiety over wondering what the hell was wrong with me and ... oh wait?! I didn't mention that Edie's fever spiked on Wednesday and we ended up at the doctor's office with an ear infection.

This week felt like it might never end. But the Amoxicillin is finally kicking in and the doctor prescribed Zyrtec for Edie at bedtime, which seems to be helping her sleep through the terrible coughing (which previously was waking her every 30 seconds, ALL NIGHT LONG). Long story short - Edie slept most of the night last night and took a great nap today, I'm recovered enough to gain back all the weight I lost earlier in the week and we will (finger's crossed) hopefully be ushering out the cold and flu season very soon. Because seriously. SERIOUSLY.