If you were wondering if "Miriam's Trunk" featured on Design*Sponge's Before/After's today is me...

It is!!!

WErhgsadASDLKgha;ilsduopwiehr!!!!! See? I'm so excited that I can't even type coherently! If you read design blogs, than you already know that Design Sponge is the most AMAZING, drool worthy, inspiring design blog out there. And they featured my before and after that's really a DIY project, but they can call it whatever the heck they want, and I'd still be thrilled!! Woohoo!

I'm not dead. I'm watching SYTYCD.

So it's no secret that I don't have quite as much free time as I used to, and because I spend at least three hours a week watching So You Think You Can Dance, I just haven't had time to blog. Not that I've ever been a real consistent blogger anyway.

So life is good. There's a lot of things that I could write about, but since that would take a long time, I'll give you convenient bulleted list. This will be fun, cause you can guess what I would say if I did take the time to ramble about...

-Josie finally actually turned two, which is funny cause she's been two for like six months.

-Having two kids isn't near as bad as I thought it would be.

-Newborns are a delicious breed of human.

-Do you ever feel like your workouts take up your entire day? Not only because IF you don't finish before the kids get up, they really DO take the whole day, but because all day is a recovery of your morning workout, and all day is also just a count down to your next work out. I hate that. I just want to workout and then forget about it.

-I wish I knew how to make Josie feel more secure, because recently (like yesterday and today) she's hit Merritt a couple of times, and it brings out the big bad Mama Bear in me, and I lose it. I really hate it when I lose it.

-Cooking dinner every night is a real beast.

-I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I've been busy with just as many projects as ever. I feel like since I have two kids I shouldn't have time for that kind of stuff, but yet I still find away. Everyone always asks me how I can manage to do everything, and to that I say, I don't. There isn't enough time to do everything, and so when I get a project done, I don't cook dinner or don't clean the house.

-I wish I knew how to balance my life better.

-I'm amazed that nobody ever talks about how poop and potty are such a huge part of motherhood. Who knew? Poop and Potty are significant part of my day. Everyday. It seems like there's always something to wipe, or wash, or change. But at least it's my kids' poop and potty I have to deal with, because that would really be gross if I had to clean up your kid's...

-I really like the library.

-Help! I can't stop reading self-help books!

-I signed up for a triathlon today. WOO WOO!!! (September 12, baby!)

I'm sure there's more I could bullet about, but it's already taken me like a half an hour to come up with that list.

Here are some pictures to accompany my bullets:

Two.

Two's birthday dress. I saw this in a magazine for $98, and recreated it for $4. I actually took pictures to make a tutorial if anyone is actually interested.

Just chillin...

Stealing Grandma's glasses...

Adam left his fake glasses here, and this is Josie right before she broke them. Sorry, Egg.


Josie and Mae enjoying a good read with Grandad.


Family vacay to my parents. They don't live in the cliff dwellings. (and don't judge me on how big my arm looks in this picture).


Mesa Verde. So cool.


What Josie does when we're not in the room.


Some sweet close-ups of my angel.




I bought an old military foot locker at DI for $3, planning to upholster it and make it into a toy chest. But once I started sanding it etc, it was so gross and nasty I decided to just make a new one entirely. So I just went down the Home Depot, bought some plywood, had them cut it to the dimensions I needed (do you know they do that for free?!) and then slapped the puppy together with some wood glue and nails, upholstered it and printed the fabric with a homemade stencil, and BAM. A new toy chest.
Here are the toys within.


I decided I needed a purse to use when I'm without my kids. I know, it doesn't happen often, but when it does, I always feel like I've got these big old mom-bags, and I don't feel cute (especially on date's with Allan). So I designed this little purse to help me feel more hip. Too much?

This doesn't look near as exciting as it is. I bought this curtain hardware at Ikea, and then free-handed some designs onto a big cut of fabric to make this room separator. Our front room is really pretty big, and all my sewing crap is just out in the open of my living room. I have long-loathed our set-up. So this divides the two areas and helps define the living spaces. I rearranged the whole room, and LOVE it. There's NOTHING so refreshing and exciting as rearranging furniture.

And another HUGE project I've been working on is my dang quilt (the one I've been working on for over a year for our king-sized bed). I'm ALMOST done with the top, and then it will probably just sit there for years until I have enough $$$ to actually have it quilted.

I never know how to wrap up huge posts like this, so I'll just say be glad that I used bullets to SUM up all this mumbo jumbo.

XXoxo
Mim

MJ Forever

Yeah, so I'm totally swiping your blog post, Averi. Even the picture and title. Take it as a compliment! I would...
MJ does, and will live forever. He's as immortal as Elvis, or the Beatles. He's the King of Pop! I am totally incapable of not bopping my head, or snapping, or popping my shoulders at least a little when I hear Black or White, Bad, or The Way You Make Me Feel to name a few. The beat just forces you to Rock with him.....Alll Night. That was why Michael Jackson was our first choice as motivating background music for the few times we cleaned up around the house growing up. My mom would say we had to clean up (the exact phrase was "do a cleanteam"), so we'd set the clock for thirty minutes, pump the Michael Jackson Greatest Hits CD, and work it like the King himself. Ahh, those were the days... That was almost as glorious as taking first place in a college dance competition (Battle of the Dance, baby) where we popped and locked our way through Smooth Criminal. We won first place, and if you had been there to witness the event, you'd have thought I just won the lottery. I'm still embarrassed when I think about how much I freaked out. Well, that is what I'm good at. That and MJ moves. Just yesterday as I was finishing my run, the song "Bad" came on, and I'll admit it, I threw a kick or two. Can you just see it, Marth?

So, I'm willing to put aside his recent creepiness to pay homage to the king. He was cool enough that in highschool I checked out every single music video he ever made and thus learned how to moon walk in my tv room. Well, kinda.

May we all (or at least any of you out there who ever did the Thriller dance head-bobble-slide-stomp combo) take off your white glove and throw your hat for the King of Pop.

And then we blessed him

...On Sunday. It was nice. Nice to see family. Nice to eat good food. Nice to fall a little more in love with my husband as he blessed our little baby.

We tried to get a family photo, but we were extremely limited on time, because Josie had pooped in the toilet without me, and forgot to wipe, and unfortunately it was the kind of poo that you really ought to wipe. Did I mention that she didn't have underwear on? She didn't because earlier she had leaked a little before making it to the toilet, so I just took them off. Consequently this rather unforgiving poop was in chunks all over her dress, and legs, and well everywhere. Anyway, we discovered all this just moments before these photos were taken, and that's why she's standing in front of us, and not sitting on our lap. Merritt pooped too, but it wasn't as big a deal. I took some awesome photos of the poop smeared dress as well as Allan hosing her off stark naked in the backyard, but I'll spare you. I have to remind myself sometimes that not everyone enjoys a good poop documentation like I do.

The photos of Merritt are pretty dark too, but it was rainy today and so that's the best I could do. As my Mom would say, it is what it is. And that's fine. I also tried to get him to smile--he does so often--but he was pretty stoic this morning, and that's fine too. Stoic Merritt is almost as cute as smiley Merritt.

Oh, and I cut my hair.

I'm slain...

...by that three-week-old smile

The Birth Beat

Hilarious, as well as a painful reality.

I've been meaning for some time to blog about this, but I didn't want to do it until I had enough time to really say what I want to, which, you know, never really happens, so I'm just going to take a stab at it. P.S. This IS the longest post I've ever written, so don't bother reading it if you have absolutely no interest in childbirth. Or do. But don't feel obligated, because I won't ask you about it next time I see you. You're safe.

Josie's labor was a jumble of both good and bad. For months and months I would play out in my mind the whole experience, just trying to process it. There were a few complications during labor that made it stressful and difficult for me (the precautions limited my options and freedom significantly i.e. continuous internal fetal monitoring that restricted me to the bed), and so in that sense I disappointed. I had a fairly negative experience with my healthcare providers; it felt like it was Me vs. Them, and that my desires to birth naturally were met with a whole lot of reluctance, pessimism, and at times, straight-up doubt that I had the ability to do it. And after it was all over, I honestly couldn't believe I'd gone through that much pain. The whole experience was completely surreal. So, all those things sound bad. True. The good part, no, the amazing part, which I also went over and over in my mind, completely in awe of the experience--was when I pushed her out, and she was resting on my chest. It was unbelievable. I had worked so hard for her, and there she was. Real. Really in my arms. It was like a climax of utterly intense emotions--love, pride, relief, strength, empowerment, exhaustion.....gratitude. I wouldn't trade that experience for the world. But backing up a little bit, during transition (for all you who don't know yet, that's the period of time when you go from dialating to ready-to-push), I had that classic moment of self-doubt. It's very typical for women to doubt their ability to really do it during transition, and I definitely did. Suddenly the physiological experience becomes so intense that you wonder how much longer you can keep it up. The good thing about transition however, is that it means you're almost done; ironically, that feeling comes when you're so near the end. Anyway, I was expressing these feelings of doubt to Allan, and my midwife Mindy sat down and said "honey, you are no less of a woman if you need medication now. Don't feel guilty if that's what you want." I was frustrated by this comment, but I didn't have the energy or frame-of-mind to articulate that I wasn't birthing unmedicated because I wanted to be "a woman." I wasn't looking to feed my ego with toughness or bravery; I wasn't out to prove anything--in fact, I'm positive that if that were my motivation, I wouldn't have been able to actually do it! I was laboring unmedicated because I believed it was better for me and my baby. So here's the point of this anecdote. In the months following her birth, I thought a lot about that moment, and knew that if I were ever going to labor unmedicated again, I needed to KNOW exactly why I felt that natural was better for me and my baby. I wanted to understand perfectly all the pros and cons of both medicated and unmedicated labor. IF I ever were to labor naturally again, I had to, or else I knew that I couldn't do it.

So, that experience is what initiated my obsession with childbirth. For months I've poured over books on birthing--books advocating both natural and medicated labors. I went to the library, searched "childbirth," and basically checked out everything that came up. I wasn't really interested in labor methods as I was about learning the risks and benefits and even simply the physiological process of childbirth. As I learned, two things began to happen. First of all, I began to think that most of my disappointment and frustration with how Josie's birth played out stemmed from the attitudes of my careproviders, as well as (what I believed to be) unnecessary interventions, which were all largely a result of my own ignorance. Secondly, the debate in my mind became less about natural vs. medicated, and more about being informed enough to make good decisions, and then actually having the freedom to make them. I felt like I had very little choice during Josie's labor because the complications were blown out of proportion, and I felt I had little or no say in the decision-making process. I was mad about that, and the more I studied the more I believed that the lack of knowledge on my part had made me unconfident and unqualified to voice my objection to what was going on, because I didn't really know whether or not their attitudes and the precautions taken were necessary or not, and so I couldn't voice my gut feeling that everything was fine. Limited knowledge meant limited power.

As I gained knowledge through study, I felt I gained power too. I discovered that so much of my anxiety to deliver again was related to my ignorance in the why/what concerning both the physiological process of childbirth, as well as the safety interventions into that process. I came away with a reverence for our women-bodies, and complete confidence in my body's ability to labor just fine without anyone or thing interfering. I know that may sound presumptuous, but I believe that. I recognize that there are times when intervention is necessary and miraculous, and for that I'm grateful. But I also believe that MOST of the time our bodies know exactly when and what to do, and that often modern medicine can screw up that process.

I realize this is a sensitive topic for some, and so I wholeheartedly hope this doesn't come off offensive to anyone. Believe that I don't mean it to be! These are my experiences and feelings, and my journey to them was so personal that I wouldn't dream of ever telling anyone that laboring naturally is right for them--I would sooner tell them how many kids to have. What I do want to say, and what I've come to feel passionately about, is EDUCATE yourself! No matter what your ideal childbirth is, or how the heck you feel about medication during labor, knowing what's happening, why they're happening, and when intervention is needed, can only give you more confidence, peace, and ability to make healthy and informed choices during your own labor. If some type of intervention (i.e. induction, epidural, forceps, vacuum, episiotomy ETC) is needed or desired unexpectedly, knowing what's up will give you the power to choose rather than letting decisions be made for you, or in my case, allowing myself to be manipulated into certain decisions because of the fear factor (they said things like "you want a healthy baby, right?" Of COURSE I did! Every mother does! But not knowing anything makes THEM the authority on what's best). Plus, it will give you more choices. I promise. Example: Say you're a week overdue, and your providers want to induce you. Do YOU know the risks involved with an overdue baby? Do you know the risks of induction? Do you know the risks and benefits of allowing labor to begin on its own? Ok, so say you think induction is necessary--do you know the many different ways to induce and the risks/benefits involved with each? It is likely that your careproviders will give you one option, when in reality, there are many, and some are much less invasive than others. This is the case with medication, monitoring, pushing, positions, delivery, post-partum care, the list goes on and on. The more you know, the more choices you have.

And what's more, I feel like my confidence in being able to make good decisions, and my body's ability to its thang thang made everything go smoother during my labor. Merritt's labor was so calm and relaxed. It was such a positive experience ultimately, and I'm positive that my preparation made the difference. I think that at the end of the day, preparation and control have a lot more to do with satisfaction of experience than the presence or absence of pain. Reading up will only help you--regardless of how you choose to labor. Have I made my case??

I'm taking the liberty of listing here some of my favorites reads here.

Pushed: the painful truth about childbirth and modern maternity care by Jennifer Block. This is soooooo interesting. So fascinating. Read it. It's packed with studies and statistics and interviews and stories and it's really really good.

Easy Labor: every woman's guide to choosing less pain and more joy during childbirth by William Camann. This was my favorite book written from the pro-medicated side of the fence, and it provides a pretty good (although biased) overview of what you should know. I recommend this to the woman who wants her epidural yesterday. I also strongly recommend reading this ALONG with:

Easing Labor Pain: the complete guide to a more comfortable and rewarding birth. by Adrienne Lieberman. And this was my favorite book written from the pro-natural side of the fence. It also provides a pretty good (although biased) overview of what you should know. Again, I strongly recommend reading this along with Easy Labor. PS in this same category I also really enjoyed Labor Pain: a natural approach to easing delivery by Nicky Wesson.

Birthing From Within: an extra-ordinary guide to childbirth preparation by Pam England. I want to own this book. I love it. As far as labor methods go, this is it for me. It's all about trusting the natural physiological process, and just getting in touch with your inner birthing self. It also deals a lot with the psychology of birth, and working through you own issues (i.e. fear, anger, regret, disappointment, etc). And it has "birth art." Hello....What's weirder and cooler than birth art?!

The Business of Being Born (a documentary) produced by Ricki Lake. Yeah, so you should probably watch this now. Like, today. It's basically a very poignant, condensed documentary version of Pushed, and very worthwhile. Disclaimer: this has a lot of naked women giving birth, as well as naked women cursing while giving birth. PS. this streams from NetFlicks, and we watched it by signing up for the trial version.

So that's it. I'm genuinely sorry it's so long. If you want to know more about any of this, or want to read my birth story (Merritt's), just let me know. Another disclaimer though, my birth story is not for the weak of heart, and probably not for men. You know, just FYI.

Love you. Hug, hug, kiss, Big hug, leetle kiss.

Meet Merritt

So I just realized that we don't have any whole body shots, which is a shame, cause he's got a pretty one. So solid and cute. I do have amazing news, though. He successfully peed in his mouth this morning while I was changing him. He started to pee while I was between diapers, and so I tried to block the pee with my hand, but not before a very accurate stream had gone directly into his open mouth. Gross and kinda cool.

Here he is. You gotta love those CHEECKS! And the hair! Oh, isn't he just amazing??

He reminds me of Josie in this one. The eyes are really similar to her's at that age.
And this one is classic. This was literally moments after I pushed him out, and I definitely look the part. When I looked in the mirror a little while later and said "Yikes" the nurse said, "just think of it as war-paint." I just love the picture cause it brings me back to that on-top-of-the-world moment that it was. So great.