A Hard Worker

ButterBean is shaping up to be a workaholic!
I've already written about how he loves to clean. However, this has evolved into him giving me the dustpan and broom and "Nnnhh! Nnnhh!"ing until I sweep! 
When desperate, he does the sweeping himself.

He has added mowing the lawn sidewalk to his list of chores

He also loves secretarial work, like answering phones and typing. 

These pictures were taken while we waited at a recent doctor appointment

He even answers the phone for his grandma from time to time "Hello, how may I help you?"

Last, but certainly not least, he tries to help me "study". This is also known as scribble on Mommy's text book with highlighter!

The life of a baby can be so busy! It's amazing that he gets it all done!

What a Wedding!

Yesterday our family went to our friends' wedding and I felt like I fell into a Pinterest board! The bride had thought of every cute detail imaginable! I wanted to run around taking pictures of everything, but then I remembered that I am not a party or wedding blogger and really don't need all of those pictures. And, I was chasing a 16 month boy and keeping him from jumping into the lake.

All those little pink and grey balls: handmade by bride- she had to have made 100 of them at least!

Our table

 The reception was held at the bride's parents' lake home. Their neighbors were kind enough to let them use their property as well. So, there were two tents, one for cocktails and one for dinner, both decked out with twinkling votives, gorgeous pink flowers, and pink and grey accents galore. Their grand entrance was coming in on a pontoon and dancing up the dock as they were announced. She had the photo booth with hats and moustaches, adorable pink and grey striped paper straws for mini individual bottles of pink champagne, hand made wood signs for each area, signature cocktails, and on and on. It should have been in a magazine! I loved it!!

And to top it off -- splendid dessert table!!

I didn't get a picture of the whole thing because it was quite the popular spot and got crowded quickly! There were brownie cheesecakes, white chocolate macarons, candies, pink cake, and individual jarred pies!

Too cute!! I had a raspberry pear pie, but there was also sour cherry and strawberry rhubarb. Ok, I had a macaron or three as well! 

What made the desserts even more special is that all of them (except the candy)were hand made by the bride's cousins. Eleven siblings in that family and the girls all made the desserts, while the boys help construct tents and dance floors. Butterbean made friends with one of the boys and was doing everything in his power to get his attention for the rest of the evening!

ButterBean dancing by himself on the dancefloor - he wouldn't let me dance with him, the little stinker!

Butterbean lasted well into the night, rocked it on the dance floor, and got oodles of compliments on his cuteness!! We all had a great time seeing friends and relaxing on the lake! Fabulous night!

24 hour lunch

One of my tactics for spending as much time as possible with ButterBean is to clump my clinical hours together so that I have longer chunks of time at home. Therefore, I subject myself to the 24 hour shift. Dum dum dummm! A 24 hour shift in the operating room can either be easy or insanely exhausting (like my last one...skull fracture, ruptured aortic aneurysm, C-sections, thoracoscopy, ectopic pregnancy, femur fracture ... to name a few). Besides the challenge of sleep deprivation with high adrenaline and caffeine overload, comes the challenge of eating healthy. It's high stress, you're tired, feel like you should get an award for your hard work, and the food options are extremely limited if you don't bring your own!

Today I am pre-making a few items for my 24-hour-packed-lunch instead of shoving all sorts of random pieces of food in my bag tomorrow.

Breakfast: Raw Bars - recipe courtesy of one of my beautiful college roommates, who has a passion for healthy living

Lunch: Homemade Hummus with carrots and celery. Maybe some leftover couscous and African kale stew from yesterday

From humble dried garbanzo beans to glorious creamy hummus!

Snacks/Shovel in my mouth between cases:

Apple

Peach

Almonds

Dinner: "Symphony" Salad 

My Dad calls any salad with multiple components a symphony salad. In honor of Fathers Day tomorrow I'll bring a symphony salad. It will look something like this:

and be composed of local/organic spinach, kale, chard, and arugula blend, strawberries, blueberries, walnuts, goji berries, and bleu cheese. If I had an avocado it would be going in there too, but I don't. For dressing I just bring olive oil and balsamic vinegar with cracked black pepper. This is one of my all time favorite salads!!

Green Juice

My parents just recently bought a fantastic juicer. Whenever I venture over there I'm guaranteed to get a tall glass of green juice: kale, celery, cucumber, lemon, apple, ginger, and perhaps a tumeric tuber. If I had a larger kitchen I can see investing in a juicer. For now though, I'll just look forward to fresh juice a couple times a week! I'd like to try a juice fast and see how I feel. I'll update if I get around to it.

Surprisingly, or not so surprisingly I guess considering he'll eat anything, ButterBean loves green juice! 

Sans juicer, I've been staying hydrated with home-made sun tea and cold-press iced coffee. Not nutritious, but tasty. Unfortunately my glass sun-tea jar has acquired a leak around the spigot. I've not had good luck with glass lately. Besides the sun-tea jar, I broke a half gallon glass bottle of whole milk in the back seat of my car on the way home from the co-op today. That's going to smell great this summer! And, I still have to make another trip to the store for milk! I'm trying my best to avoid plastic, but glass is giving me a run for my money!

Ahh DAaahhh!

For the most part "Ahh DAaahh!" means "a dog"
We hear "Ahh DAaaahhh!" a lot!! He watches out the window for dogs that go by, on walks we hear it for every dog that passes (and every stroller that goes by) and today it took on a new meaning: duck!
This morning I took ButterBean to a pond close to our house to feed the ducks and geese. Big hit!

He wasn't scared of the ducks or the hissing geese at all! Ducks are adorable creatures, but geese...not so much! We didn't get to feed the teensy newly hatched ducklings because the geese shooed them away. I probably looked crazy, but I threw bread as hard as I could, way out to the wee duckies. ButterBean wanted to get to the baby ducks too. He tried numerous times to run into the weeds and over the embankment to get into the pond with them. 
The mama and papa geese kept hissing at ButterBean, but he would just look at them, point, and say "Ah DAaahhh!"

I gave ButterBean some bread to throw. He sort of understood the concept. He threw the bread on the ground. He then proceeded to pick it back up and eat it. So, I became official bread thrower! 

One of my fondest memories as a little girl is walking around the pond across the street from my grandparents' house with my Grandpa Andy. We would bring bread in a bag to feed the ducks and geese and then use the bread bag to pick up trash as we walked. I loved the time I got to spend with my grandpa and I always felt so proud of myself for helping to keep the pond clean! I'm glad I can now share this experience with my son. I'm looking forward to many more duck-feeding adventures!

Yes, I am "Mom Enough", thank you

A couple of weeks ago I read the article from the controversial Time magazine of the breast feeding mom with the title "Are You Mom Enough?". As soon as I saw the magazine come in the mail I knew I'd be reading that a.s.a.p.

The article is about attachment parenting and one of it's main proponents, Dr. Sears.  I'll admit that my first thoughts about attachment parenting were jealous thoughts: wishing I could stay home with ButterBean and be little Suzy Homemaker. I was happy to find that even without knowing it, I've been using a lot of the attachment parenting methods. Really, I found that it's a lot of common sense.
My Experience With Attachment Parenting
First, I breastfed ButterBean for six months. A lot of things I've read about attachment parenting recommend child-led weaning, but being a busy mom who is sometimes gone for 24 hours straight, it wasn't going to happen...and he was a biter. I can't imagine still breast feeding him now with his 12 chompers. Kudos to those who do!

Second, we have a "family bed". We didn't plan it this way, but we've given up on the crib, and he just sleeps with us all the time. If we do end up putting him in the crib while he is asleep, I miss him and he only lasts an hour or so before he realizes he is alone. Then, I bring him back to our bed and give him an extra snuggle. I've read some of Mayim Bialik's philosophy about co-sleeping and really liked what she had to say about how natural it is to sleep with your child and how scary it can be to be alone as a child. See, I didn't fail at getting him to sleep in a crib, I succeeded at co-sleeping!

Third, I tried to carry him in a sling as a baby, but he wasn't keen on being "worn". He loves being held and cuddled, but not the confinement of a sling or carrier.

I am all for attachment parenting, however I was a bit offended by the title "Are you Mom enough?" Well, let's see here...yes...yes, I am thank you! Although I'd love to stay home with him everyday, it's not going to happen. Despite being gone frequently, we still have a healthy and "attached" relationship! I love every minute I get to spend with him when I'm home. I'd never recommend having a baby while in anesthesia school because it is difficult both with time management and with a mommy guilt complex, however, I'd never change my life and not have ButterBean!!!

Mother's Day

I had a marvelous Mother's Day! My own little bundle can't do much for his mama yet, but I know one day he is going to bring me home a droopy marigold that he planted himself in a little pot at school and I'm going to gush over it like is was the finest rose! This Mother's Day was more about my own mom! It happened to be her birthday this Mother's Day. She has done a superb job raising me and my sisters and I will always look up to her!

Soooo, I made her a birthday cake of course: Martha Stewart's Lemon Cake! It's so rich, it's almost like a pound cake. It calls for lemon zest, so I definitely used organic lemons for this cake. I've made it a couple of other times and it always turns our delicious. (This is actually a picture from another time that I made it.)

And I made all of us a nice little brunchy breakfast. My favorite were the rhubarb scones that I made with rhubarb from my mom's backyard. Yummm. 

I have more rhubarb in my fridge and I plan to make these again! I recommend them good with a cup of tea, like all good baked goods should be enjoyed!

We also went over to celebrate Gatsby's mother and got to relax some more in the sun! Perfect weather for the cousins to romp in the backyard! ButterBean had a "hair-raising" experience: learning to drive! We all got a good laugh at his static style!

The pictures don't do justice to the amount of hair that was sticking up!

he was very frustrated that he couldn't stand in the car

ButterBean had a very in depth conversation with his godfather. It sounded pretty serious!

Mother's day was a perfect example of balancing school and family. I had a big test on Monday, but there was no way I was missing this amazing family time. I was able to completely forget about the test for a few hours and enjoy good food, good weather, and good company! I got in a couple hours of studying between celebrations while ButterBean and Gatsby napped. For anyone considering anesthesia school, believe me, you're world will be utterly consumed with studying! Take a break sometimes and forget about it! You don't (and you won't) ace every test! And that's ok! Happy Mother's Day to all the overly busy mom's out there!