I could just be an astronaut or the president or a cupcake alligator.

I don't know what I'm going to do when I grow up. I've already grown up, right? Still, no clue.

I'm at a crossroads where I could either try to turn our bike business into either:

A. a regular business like this year, try to make a profit, or:

B. a nonprofit, drawing a small salary for each of us, providing cheap bikes to the community, cheap rentals, cheap repairs, and stuff like subsidized bike lighting so that people in this city don't ride around in the dark. The lighting thing came to me when I was walking to the store in the dark - I looked behind me and saw a person at the top of my street, then he whizzed by me ten seconds later. I stopped and talked to him at an intersection and mentioned he should get a light, that I hadn't seen him. He didn't speak wonderful English, but the next time I saw him, he had a light. I'm hoping maybe that will help him either not get hit by a car, or not accidentally hit a pedestrian (nothing here is very well lit). Maybe people would donate to us, maybe we could get a few grants if we formed a committee to promote biking, maybe people will just give us their used bikes as a tax writeoff and we can turn those into covering operating costs.

Or, we could continue the bike business as a part time side thing, and I could get a full time job outside the home and we could make more money and buy more things.

I'm not really sure what to do. I like the bike stuff. But it's not a huge moneymaker. This is my time to use my fresh degree, and all of the business school's resources and job fairs and job banks, to get a job that can lead to a career. In two or three years, I'm not really going to have that.

But I am not really a fan of money, either. We've got what we need, we could always use more, we're not far from broke since we've had to pay so many medical bills, but we won't be homeless - if Mike loses his DJ gigs that can all change in an instant, but for now we are surviving because we buy used EVERYTHING. When I was working 45 hours a week, I spent so much money on commuting and food at work and my car... it's almost a question of being worth it.

Even if I don't get a job, my degree has already helped immensely, it's made us able to start the business and be confident we're not making huge financial mistakes. It's made it possible for me to handle basic accounting without needing to pay an outside bookkeeper.

Either way, I can't imagine NOT getting a job after both kids go to school, because I am not the kind of person who can just sit idle for very long. Unless it's during a nap. I guess I'll have to just see what I can get on the job market, and make sure it's enough to cover daycare and leave me with enough to pay bills.

To School!

The busy season is winding down, thankfully, although my semester is nearly over so I have many projects to finish, most involving statistics and math. Statistics I get, math, meh.

But! Nathan and Evan are now both in school. Evan goes to the Gloucester High School's daycare on Tuesday and Thursday, my school days. He seems to be having a fun time, there's some other cute babies there, and it's a small little group of babies with a good ratio of caretakers to kids. One day I picked him up at the end of the day and he was wailing because he was tired and his nose was running and WIPING HIS NOSE IS AKIN TO TORTURE AND THIS STRANGE LADY DID IT - so I'm pretty sure I just lowered the future Gloucester teen birth rate by a good amount. DOIN' MY PART.

Nathan is going to Head Start preschool in the mornings. Nothin' like bein' so poor you qualify for free preschool, but honestly it's wonderful. His first day was Thursday, I totally forgot to mention to his teacher that he was wearing underpants and not a diaper (most kids are diapered still) and...

He peed on the slide. Kid's first day, and he peed on the playground slide. I'm a terrible mom.

He seemed no worse for the wear, as 2 year olds don't really yet understand the social non-acceptance of peeing one's pants, and his next day of school he had pizza and a field trip and he was so excited to be back. He's warming up just fine, and I love getting to the classroom to pick him up and seeing him mouth "that's my mommy!" when he sees me through the window.

Speaking of cutest goddamn thing EVER, Nathan started skating - the Cape Ann Skating Club takes kids starting at 2.5, and Mike had previously found toddler skates at Savers for $6.99. He LOVES IT. His first lesson he just fell all over the place, but now he's actually able to move his little feet across the ice and even reach down and pick up items off the ice by himself.



I missed today's lesson because I am super sick, but he was a huge fan of the Zamboni and kept asking to see Zambonis at home. We told him he had to wait until tonight when the Bruins game is on. He also has a tiny hot wheels Zamboni he spent the afternoon cleaning the coffee table with.

And that's why we don't eat our young. Because yes, he's two and terrible and whines about everything and NEEDS CANDY NOW MOM and pushes his brother but holy crap, he's just so CUTE and he learns something every day and he's so earnest and so helpful and sweet. I couldn't be more proud of the kid, honestly.

This is why I'm not around much anymore!

Mike and I started our own company selling bikes at the Cape Ann Farmer's Market. We called it Big Mike's Bikes, and we're focusing on selling accessories and bikes at the farmer's market, as well as on-site tuneups and service and such. Last week was our first at the Farmer's Market. It was a blast!

So since that takes up most of my time, I probably won't be around much (not like I post regularly anyway).

I do promise to update about the bumblebee-colored playroom I'm making out of our old master bedroom that was functioning as electronics storage. When it's done, of course.

This is a Rooster Playing Soccer.

My mom and I took both kids to Stage Fort Park yesterday and a little girl was running around with the tamest, tiniest rooster I've ever seen. Oh, and it played soccer.



Kinda awesome, Gloucester!

The City of Brotherly Food

Last week we took a trip down to Bethesda, MD to go visit my cousin Jillian, who was having a baby shower for her impending firstborn. We all drove in our Mazda5, with my mom added, which was the cheapest option. Apparently, you can fit three adults and two kids in those things for a 10 hour stretch! Who knew. We also did not kill each other, which was an added bonus.

My mom took the Amtrak back home so she could get to work at 7AM Monday, and we had nowhere in particular to be until a class I had Tuesday, so we took an extra day to check out Philadelphia. We didn't have too much time, just enough to realize the cheesesteaks aren't particularly special (but that cheese wiz is pretty damn good on it).

One of the coolest things in Philadelphia if you like ingesting food-like substances is the Reading Terminal Market.



It reminded me of the Lonsdale Quay in Vancouver, but with a bigger selection, and more of a focus on deli stuff, as well as a noticeable lack of maple sugar beaver tales (HUMPH.)



It wasn't lacking for desserts, however. Shortly after this picture was taken I had to wipe the drool off Nathan. And myself.



Nathan's favorite, however, was the spice shop full of assorted bags of colored sugars and sprinkles.

We also tried raw milk for the first time ever. It was good, and the lack of homogenization meant you could lick the cap because it was all butter stuck to it, which was tasty. However, it's nothing I would go miles to seek out at home.

The only other notable thing in Philadelphia was that people were staring at my Bruins tattoo, apparently (Mike noticed, I didn't). However, we have a Stanley cup this year, and they don't, so they can kiss my ass.

CHECK OUT THIS SWEET-ASS MOURNING DOVE

He was hangin' out, bein' a bird, eatin' from our feeder. We usually get small finches and the like, but usually nothing as cool as this guy.

Toddler Hijinks

Yesterday morning, Nathan stuck his Self-Propelled James the Red Engine into my hair, and his whirring little wheels immediately caught a large chunk of it. I was not even awake yet, so this was most unwelcome. I ended up having to pull out a small chunk of hair.

As I was pulling out that hair, he managed to grab the baby shampoo from the side of the tub and dump it on the hardwood floors in the hallway, then slipped and fell in it.

This morning I went to make myself a cup of coffee and came back in to find he was banging the crank arm of a bicycle against our flat screen TV. While completely naked.

He's also had a hilaaarious habit lately of tossing any toilet paper left in the vicinity of the toilet (I mean, why would it be there?)INTO said toilet. I've become adept at measuring how much toilet paper can be flushed in one flush in each bathroom and how to keep the rest stuck to the side of the bowl with a stick until the toilet refills. Kids HATE THE ENVIRONMENT apparently.



So destructive. YET SO ADORABLE.

Early Harvest

We got to eat the earliest of our garden's harvest this week. Sugar snap peas, and kale. Gardening Year 3 should be the most successful so far (year 2 was a complete disaster, year 1 was pretty good for a beginner).

20 miles!

I accidentally biked all the way to Beverly yesterday! Backstory: Mike fixed me up an awesome little road bike.



Orange and blue!

I kinda just got on my bike and went. Mike took both boys to the Wenham Museum so I could nap, because I'd had a long sleepless night with a sick kid. But I couldn't sleep, so off I went, figuring I'd turn around after a few miles.

I made it to Manchester-By-The-Sea, and was ecstatic! I asked Mike to drive up 127 and meet me when he got out of the museum, so I just figured I'd keep going until I was really too tired and I'd wait for him. The great part was that 127 ends in Beverly, so the mile markers counted down, and when I got to Manchester it was at 5 miles left, and then I kept going and all of a sudden I saw this:



I was at Pride's Crossing, and Beverly Farms, and then in Beverly, and he happened to be waiting at a light right where 127 ends.

I won't lie, I stopped like 5 times, and walked up a few short but excruciating hills. And I know 15 miles is pretty much a cakewalk for most people, but I'm terribly out of shape, damnit!

Then, later, I took another bike ride around Wenham Lake with Mike, a shorter 5 1/2 mile ride. So, like, 20 miles! Woo!

State of the Garden

Last you saw, I had just planted our garden for the year.



This was taken nearly a month ago, when things were just getting rolling.



And here, this morning. The difference is insane!



Tiny zucchini! Yay!



Peas!

The weedblock stuff is legit awesome (newspaper under it really helps). I won't do it any other way again.

I'm totally okay with days apart from my kid. Am I an anomaly?

Confession: I'm not as distraught as I feel I should be when my kids aren't around me.

It's not like when we're apart I don't miss them. I just seem more detached than the other moms I know. For instance, once every couple of weeks Nathan sleeps over with my mom and dad (and sometimes my siblings who are in college). Sunday night, he asked repeatedly to see my mom until I called her at work, and we arranged to meet to drop him off until the next day. Sure, I missed him a little, but I also had so much time to get things done without him. Never at any point while he's with them do I think "I want to leave right now and get him!" A week and a half ago, my mom took him camping for two nights. I think every other mom I know would have never let that happen, but I was happy to get time to do homework and have more time to myself. I was glad to see him when he got back, of course.

The same happened while I was working. I missed them a little, but it was intensely relaxing not to be in a routine of manual labor taking care of them. It's not that taking care of them means constantly toiling, but it does have hard parts. Work has adult-time, which for me was really necessary. My need to feel validated by contributing to a workplace was far more pressing than my need to be around my sons all day, every day.



Maybe the fact that I know they're having fun, and in great hands with either their dad or a grandparent, leads me to be completely relaxed and laid-back about them being without me. Or maybe I'm too detached and individualistic, and I'm not the greatest parent?

Chicken Run!

I made a thing I am proud of!

We decided we should get a few more chickens (an Auracana named James who is a she and a Silver-laced Wyandotte named Bonnie, with 3 more to come from the same home), but we needed a bigger spot for them. We contemplated under the deck out back, but we would have to somehow cut holes into the house's siding to brace a structure and we didn't want to do that. But bracing it against our front fence? Much better idea.

Usually projects with long pieces of lumber are not my list because we don't have a big car, but now that the xB has no carseats because the Mazda is our family car, I just went for it. Helps that the lumber yard is about a mile away. And the xB is magical, I fit like 16 pieces of 8 and 10 foot 2x4s in with no issue, I just used a bungee cord to tie-down the back door. I wish they still made the original xB because man, what a versatile and fuel efficient car.

So anywho, we sketched out a basic plan and I wrote up what I needed and then got to work:



The basic box.



I cut down an old extra fence piece to make our gate, and we had a bunch of deer fencing lying around which was just enough to finish the project.



Finished, with the deer fencing stapled on and the gate latch attached.



So now the chickens are a little safer, since predators usually can't enter our front fenced yard. We can also sell the Eglu as soon as we put the chickens together - we are separating them right now because the larger two were picking on the new babies.

Now we just need to convert an old dog house into a coop as soon as we can find one.

Garden 2011

Last year's garden was a terrible mess. I was pregnant, it was hot, and the project was just way too ambitious for me at the time.

But I'm looking forward to this year. Here's our setup so far:



This time I'm not letting the weeds win. I put down newspapers, then weedblock fabric.

On the side next to the house: sugar snap peas, spinach, grape tomatoes, bell peppers, and banana peppers. On the side facing the yard (and camera): kale, and in a few days, I'll also plant zucchini and bush beans (green beans).

In containers along the side, I also planted a green bell pepper and more banana peppers.



And this guy is a cherry tomato plant, which will share the bucket with a lettuce plant. In the front yard is an identical bin with sunflowers that accidentally grew from seeds left in our birdfeeder. Hee.

Oh, also, I have to find somewhere to stick a strawberry plant.

This year I think will be better because Mike can help me since he's not in pain all day anymore. He already set up a grow light operation on the top of our chest freezer. It looks like we have a pot farm, but I swear it's just cilantro and mesclun.



Nathan enjoys watering things. I do not enjoy him watering things, mostly because they are usually things like me, the baby, his own pants, or the mail.



I think he has reached peak cuteness. He's all "Mommy, helping YOU!" when we're outside. He also told the baby he loved him, completely unprovoked. DYING OF CUTE. I AM DED.

Gettin' up off my fat butt.

So I haven't lost the baby weight from Evan. Probably because of the surgeries, and having to stop breastfeeding way before I planned to. And because I loooove food.

I have never before actually had to watch what I eat, but it was clear that now's the time. Two weeks ago I was about a pound shy of the "overweight" line for my height. And it's not like I'm muscular, so there's no excuse there.

I started using myfitnesspal.com (although there's a million sites out there). I am pretty against paying good money for stuff like Weight Watchers until I try free things first. MyFitnessPal has a Droid app Mike uses to scan barcodes of whatever he's eating.

It told me that to lose weight, I had to cut down to 1300 calories a day. Now, that seems insanely low. I'm not necessarily trusting a website with my health. But clearly, after tracking my eating for a few days, I was eating so much indiscriminately that I would never lose weight unless I changed.

So for the last week, I've been trying to be careful about my diet. Nothing crazy, just eating small meals throughout the day, measuring instead of just pouring out stuff like milk, making sure I exercise more, etc. And I've already lost two pounds.

Let's Go Bananas!

Baby version 2.0: Approximately 50% pudgier than version 1.0. Upgrades include 3x more arm folds, plus an extra chin for holding leftover milk.

(They were both nearly 4 months old when these pictures were taken.)

Mike Doesn't Think the Baby Looks Like Him.

Therefore, I present to you exhibit A.

We Bought Him a Real Bed. I Swear.

Someone didn't want to go to sleep the other night, so he snuck out of bed and read and talked to his plastic horses until he passed out on the mat.

Tuna Melt

This was today's lunch. Mike found some cheap sourdough whole wheat bread - it just happens to come in fun-size. This is a plus, because Nathan thinks it's cool and will eat it, and I eat less.

I've been trying to eat better so I can lose baby weight and just generally be healthier, but the whole two-kids-working-school thing is a bit hard. I've at least climbed back on the exercise bike for the last week.

As far as work goes, I'm pretty sad - we decided that it was not really working at home for me to be gone. The commute is long, the pay is low, and after you factored in gas and time lost, it just didnt work. They really want to keep me, and I may be able to stay on with one 9-hour shift on Mondays, but we'll have to get that worked out. In reality, Mike's side project working on bikes would make more than my job. I enjoyed the job and especially being with adults, so it's a little disappointing, but what can you do, really?

At least now I'm free to go back to school full-time, and World's Oldest Undergrad should be graduating next spring. I'm attending an MBA open house tomorrow - not that I'd go right away, but I'm interested in seeing what's involved.

Giving a Two Year Old a Big-Kid Room.

At Nathan's birthday party, my mom gave us the curtains made from the vintage cowboy material she found months ago. And they look AMAZING. I'm used to cheap IKEA curtains, and these blow those out of the water. Plus they're very heavy, so they do wonders at blocking out the light.



I'd been looking for the perfect set of bunkbeds with no luck for awhile, so I settled on the KURA bed from Ikea:



It's a fort bed at first, then it can flip over into a short loft bed like aboe and has the perfect space for a mattress on the floor underneath. This means the boys can use them as bunk beds at a younger age since it's easier to climb and not as tall as a regular set of bunk beds.

The blue paneling, however, was a huge turnoff. I remembered reading about how people painted those panels with chalkboard paint and hey, that's one thing I have in spades! So I did it up:



It was really easy, it only took about an hour in total, since the panels dried really quickly. Of course, putting the bed together was a two day long process especially because Nathan "helped" me, and by "help" I mean misplace half the screws. But he had such a fun time trying to help me out with the bed.



Here's the view from the hallway.



And a better view of the bed. I did buy the blue bed tent, and it's up now.

He really likes his new bed and new room, but was pretty pissed when we put the crib back up in his old room. Not such a big fan of sharing, that one. He got over it pretty quick when we redirected him back to FORT AWESOME BED. WITH DINOSAURS IN IT.

On Breastfeeding, or Not

I'm at a weird crossroads where I'm not sure if I'll continue nursing Evan, or just formula-feed him. Right now he's just about half and half. My supply went all crazy after staying in the hospital and being anesthetized twice in a week (meaning I had to pump and dump, but I was too tired and in pain to do so as often as I should, I only did it when I was about to shoot boobmilk high into the night sky).

Further complicating matters is that I'll be working part-time from 2-7PM Monday-Friday starting in a couple of weeks. It's a small company with nowhere to really pump, and I would normally consider doing it in my car except that I don't have an adapter and uh, there's people constantly walking through the parking lot because it's a transportation company.

And the thing is, those are far from insurmountable obstacles. I could find a way to make it work and continue breastfeeding if I really desired to. But here's the thing: I don't.

Right now, all the super-pro breastfeeding people just heard that from hundreds, thousands of miles away, and gasped and called me a terrible parent.

But I am tired. My back hurts from the position I have to contort myself into to get Evan to eat in the middle of the night. My surgery incisions hurt when I flip the other way to switch boobs, and the stent in my bile duct is still causing me pain. I just don't enjoy it anymore because of the pain and everything that's happened and already having fed Evan formula I can say that he honestly doesn't care what he's drinking. And you know what? There's no mythical bonding experience that exists solely between a breastfeeding mom and her kid that isn't there with formula feeding. I know this because I have now done both. Evan's got a lock on my face when I feed him a bottle just the same as when he's on my boob.



So I've given myself permission to give up, but I'm still not sure if I will or not. I guess time will tell.

The Hospital is Not a Place of Fun.

The last three weeks or so I had a few episodes of really bad stomach pain that radiated to my back. Friday morning, it was still terrible from an episode the night before so I headed off to the doctor. Five hours and an ultrasound later, I was in Beverly Hospital meeting with the surgeon. Turns out I had gallstones distending my entire gallbladder and a few in my common bile duct, affecting my liver. The next morning I was taken down to Beth Israel in Boston by ambulance (always kind of silly when one can walk on one's own). They sedated me and did a procedure where they went into my duct endoscopically (is that a word?) through my throat to get rid of the stones, and they also put a stent in so if other stones came out of the gallbladder, they would pass through and not get caught up like one of the 128 onramps during rush hour.

I felt extra bad because Saturday was Nathan's birthday and we had to cancel his party at the last minute. Poor kid. Good thing he's only two and has no idea what a birthday is.

Thankfully Sunday they let me go home, and Thursday I'll need surgery to remove my gallbladder. In a month, I'll have to go back to Beth Israel to get the stent taken out. Unfortunately, this is pretty painful, and I have spent a lot of time not breastfeeding because I'm on painkillers (still pumping and dumping the milk, however). I'm hoping I don't have to switch to formula permanently but only time will tell.

I haven't been able to eat much, and I especially haven't been able to eat the fatty foods I love. I just want cheesecake, and cheesy lasagna, and fried chicken... dangit!

Chalkboard-Painted Clementine Boxes

For the last month or so I've been HOUSING Clementines, with the help of a certain 3 foot tall member of the family. My friend Christa has some empty Clementine boxes in her kitchen to hold various sundry objects, so I figured I really needed to stop throwing them out.



Nathan's toys are all over the place, so I figured they could be useful under the TV. I coated the front panel in the chalkboard paint leftover from the kitchen cabinets, and used chalk to denote what goes in them. Not like Nathan reads. Or puts his toys away. But it looks good, damnit!



I like the way it came out. Also, you will note from the above picture that an IKEA entertainment center made of MDF is not to be trusted, as it's all warped from use.

He Didn't Even Throw Him On The Floor. Bonus.

Now I Can Never Leave

Our older neighbors next door snowblowed the end of our driveway today - the guy next door has always been really nice, and they knew we had a new baby and Mike had surgery, so he's done it a few times for us. I'm currently baking up some pumpkin spice muffins to give them as a thank-you, hopefully it won't be too awkward to knock on their door.

Anyway a few weeks ago my brother came up with one of his construction buddies to take care of the last few major projects in the house - fixing our downstairs bathroom where our dog, Bob, ripped out some drywall, and putting in a subway tile kitchen backsplash, finally getting rid of the terrible 1960's wallpaper that was not even vintage cool, just terrible.



Sure, I *could* have moved the PB&J out of the way, but you try doing anything with a toddler and an infant. I dare you.



This used to be a piece of cut stainless steel sheet behind here. Looks SO MUCH BETTER now.



The kitchen will never be magazine-perfect, but it's small and for 4 people and it's lived in and dangit, I can write recipes on any of the cabinets. Like pizza dough. Good to have pizza dough.

Anyway now that the house looks pretty much awesome, I don't really ever want to leave, even with the distance to Boston or anywhere that isn't the Atlantic ocean, and the sometimes crappy neighborhood. Sure, I'd like to live on some kind of hobby farm selling eggs to people, but that's a lot of work.

Parenting's kind of only as expensive as you want it to be.

Now that I'm back into the swing of parenting a newborn, I've noticed a bunch of articles, blog posts, or whatever on "Baby Cost Calculators!", "Can You Afford A Baby?", or any variation on "What to Buy for Babies!"

I realize from experience that when you're first expecting, you have an urge to buy new stuff, and possibly roll around in the floor all over the cute tiny infant outfits. Those $1000 bedroom sets sell like hotcakes. I'm vaguely aware of some phenomenon known as a "diaper cake" that gets presented at baby showers.

But honestly? Unless you live in the woods and no one likes you because you smell, people will buy you things, and hand you bags of clothes. And even if people buy you nothing, you can get SO MUCH secondhand for a fraction of the new cost. Nathan's crib was $35 on Craigslist, and his dresser is a hand-me-down (but his big-boy dresser was also on Craigslist for $30). I prefer the antique, beat-up, not matchy look anyway. Consignment shops have a litany of outfits, shoes, strollers, and assorted baby gear. Of course, the one caveat is to be careful to make sure you don't get something that's been recalled - or talk to the shop owner to see if you can return the item if you get home and look it up and find out it is recalled.

I even got car seats and bases from a trusted friend - sure, you could buy those on Craigslist, and I even gave an extra away on Freecycle, but I'm the kind of mom who won't take the very, very minute risk that they've been in an accident or thrown across a room or expired or otherwise unsafe for my pwecious cargo. And the big convertible car seats that come after the babybuckets? The Cosco Scenera is something like $60-80 on Amazon, it's well-rated, and also one of the slimmest carseats on the market.

And then there's cloth diapering. I've dropped maybe $300 on diapers for the two kids, and an additional $50 or so on disposables for emergencies, vacations, etc. It's work, and the extra water for another 2 washes a week isn't free, but diapers for a kid from infanthood through potty-training can be thousands of dollars. And then double that for the second kid. It's not the easiest thing in the world, but it's not especially hard - and I'd rather put an emergency load in the washer than run out to a store during a snowstorm for disposables. It really wasn't too much of a burden even when I was in school full-time. And I do all the washing.

Of course, pontificating about how cheap it *can* be ignores the whole childcare issue, and some people can't breastfeed and pump at work easily - adding thousands more in formula costs. I know that's the dealbreaker for a lot of people because it's horribly expensive, and I'm lucky for not having to go that route. We will once I graduate and go back to the work force. I'd worked out a schedule with my former employer where Mike and I would each be able to take days off to care for Nathan, but that plan blew up when I got laid off instead. I assume that when I work, I'll be going back full time and Mike will only be part-time, but there's no use planning for the unplannable at this point.

Anyway, Craigslist is your friend. So are consignment shops. Save that cash for your kid's college fund. Or for a vacation for yourself once your kids are old enough.

Let's Play a Rousing Game of 'Which Baby is This?'

HINT: They are not the same baby.

Baby crying? I can fix that.