Processed Wonderful Pregnancy Food!!!

Good Day to You Family!
Above and below I have provided a few photos of what I was allowed to get away with yesterday at the grocery store. The joys of pregnancy abound! The crown jewel (which even the pregnant wife couldn't help scorning even in her condition) is a yogurt that is "kid friendly" which means that it contains M&Ms to spice up that otherwise dreary and boring vanilla extra-sweetened yogurt. This "kid friendly" yogurt clocks in at 200 calories, has 30 grams of sugar and 15% of your daily value for saturated fats. I feel its my duty as a father to sample these kid friendly items to determine what is suitable for a little shim. Now, these bad boys also set you back about $1.00 each, so to make Shim the "cool kid" at school, we'll, naturally, have to supply one a day for each school day which will approximately equal (5 school days * 4 weeks a month * 9 school months *1$ each ) $180/3600 calories alone for cool yogurt + additional yogurts for after school snacks and yogurts to impress little friends. Needless to say I think Breyers will benefit greatly from the additional of our little friend in the world. Now if you are a senior family in our little organization and have a few more mouths to feed, for example the N-crew, your bill will be multiplied 6 fold to equal $1080 a school year just to compete with our yogurt coolness. Just remember, Yo-Crunch, as its called, comes with added Vitamins A&D and live and active cultures, so that is a small price to pay for your child's health :)

Joe

Reprieve from the Madhouse

Dear Friends:
We are gathered here today to celebrate the liberation of one family. This family has been cooped up in fewer square feet than are needed, looking at the former front window (broken by one of the younger members of the family who shall remain nameless, but whom we shall call Gee-oh), and reduced to eating Cheesy Tortillas. Four times a week. Cold.

There have been quarrels, my friends, and tears. A few bright moments when Daddy has the day off and we (or some non-pregnant portion of us) can go to Menards and unwind among the power tools. And occasional moments of greatness, as when we watched Guys and Dolls together, all of us marvelling at Marlon Brando's lack of talent -- though he does look good in a hat.

And today -- today, ladies and gentlemen, the temperature has soared to the balmy 45-50 degree range. The children are running around -- voluntarily -- in fresh air, wearing only t-shirts! I have the door open so the smell from the baking chicken doesn't overwhelm me.

Vitamin D! Exercise! we may avoid raving madness after all. Thank the Lord.

Prego Victory

When it comes to the costs of raising a child, I thought I was ahead of my time. Being a particularly demanding child, I caused my parents a significantly larger investment than my other brothers and sisters (except for Tony, but he's another issue altogether) and therefore I thought I would be ahead of the game when Shim enters the world and begins draining the good ole' USAA account. I know what diapers cost, I know what Catholic private schools on the East Coast cost, I know what hockey camps cost (not that Shim's mother would let Shim go, but its a good thing to know) and I know what the projected tuition for Harvard will be in the year 2026 (approximately 1 Billion dollars plus cost of living and dues to Blue Organic Living Monthly). However, I did not calculate one cost that is quite significant and therefore let this be a warning to those who are a little farther back on the road to victory/parenthood than I am.

Maternity clothing/accessories/technology is like the wedding business, one big criminal mafia that will look you right in the face and charge you obscene amounts of cash for adding a piece of elastic to a shirt that was crappy from the beginning. They are more than happy to create these over priced pieces of trash for just about every week of pregnancy, so that if you bought into the scheme, your pregnant wife would be purchasing several wardrobes a month. And since the value of elastic is significantly higher than the value of gold when it is haphazardly sown into the front of a cotton t-shirt that is supposedly designed for women in the first 1/5 of their 2nd trimester who are carrying a boy ... you see what I am saying.

Luckily for me, my wife is cheaper than me and so we bring you the following Prego Victory tale:

It has recently been brought to my attention, by my wife, that the jacket she currently owns makes her look like a grade schooler whose parents never wash her clothes and because of this the jacket has begun to stink. It should be noted that a pregnant woman has a sense of smell that rivals most blood hounds with which she can detect funk/grossness/yuckiness/mildewy smell from several miles a way depending on the wind. With this in mind we set out to secure for her a coat from the mall.

Now the problem should be clear, coats normally made during this time of the year are very cheap/ on clearance, because of the rapidly approaching spring. But those coats with the addition of elastic are quite expensive. So, we resolved to find a good coat on clearance that would do for the time being that would hopefully get her through the last cold months and could possibly be worn in a non-prego state.

Well, we searched and searched and the selection was quite picked over at most of the large department stores. The coats were on clearance but were still in the many hundreds of dollars or in the extremely hideous category. Either way, I was ready to throw in the towel and begin the necessary preparations to purchase the elastic waist banded jacket.

On a last minute whim, we decided to go into Banana Republic. Now if you know anything about Banana Republic (I heard rumors that Ed shops there....) you know that if you go inside you better be ready to step up to the plate and pay the high price coinciding with the privilege of wearing their apparel. You don't go into BR unless you are ready to play the game. So, needless to say, we didn't really have that high of hopes of success. We proceeded straight back to the clearance section on the back wall with the other paupers and suddenly a coat caught my eye on the last rung of the bottom shelf. It was several sizes bigger than anything that Gabby had tried on before, but because we were at our wits end, she tried on the coat anyway. It was as if the coat was tailored for a prego Gabby! But this was not the greatest part of the prego success story, this jacket was being essentially given away by BR for the pittance of only $20!!!!!! We honestly thought it was a joke.

In conclusion, for all you deal seeking Peases out there, here is a true success story to be contended with and I challenge you to try.

Snowing

Let me just say, this winter has been so nostalgic for me! It reminds me of the winters of my youth (pronounced "yoot" for those of you not in the know).

I would post a beautiful pic here, but I'm tech illiterate. Besides, you are all looking at it too, through your analog windows.

Downstairs, the children are hollering, but in a good way. And me -- I'm making "seafood divan" out of the old Joy of Cooking for dinner. This dish involves canned tuna, cooked broccoli, bechamel sauce, and PIMIENTOES. Dang. I guess I'll have to stock up next time I wear my hair net and shirtwaist to the Piggly Wiggly where they bag your groceries and look at you funny if you aren't wearing white gloves.

One of my favorite -- albeit somewhat irreverent -- blogs is www.junecleaverafterasix-pack.blogspot.com Just thought you'd like to know.

Fruitless Daydreams

In my current daydream -- inspired by a weary, un-Sunday-ish trip to Rainbow -- John and I live on a shady, tree-lined city street that has many children, all well brought up and from intact homes, whose parents do not buy snack packs of anything at all, and where it is always, oh, about 69 degrees and slightly breezy.

I slip on the comfortable shoes that are neatly lined up near the back door, grab my hempen shopping basket, grab the toddler by the hand, and walk out. No need to lock up, my neighbors are looking out for my older children, who are gardening in the vast but somehow manageable vegetable patch over by the babbling creek.

The toddler and I walk two blocks, waving at the happy still independent elderly and the smiling, decent adults who are out doing various constructive things. Finally we come to the corner and there it is: the neighborhood shops! There are three of them, none bigger than an ordinary storefront!

We start at the butcher/dairy. We buy one pound of chicken (locally farmed, fed organic chicken kibble) half a gallon of milk, and a small wedge of parmesan cheese. This takes four minutes. The toddler has not yet even noticed that I am still holding her hand.

Next we wander to the grocer. I buy green beans (from the farmers in 30 minutes out, who don't use pesticides), seven small but sweet pears, dried apricots (OK, probably not local, but lovingly and humanely produced, you understand) and a bottle of red wine, which the state in a fit of practicality has finally allowed grocers to carry. The toddler is getting antsy, so I give her one apricot to chew on. This has all taken 12 minutes. My bag is heavy but not too much.

Finally we go to the bakery/specialty shop, run by Catholic hippies -- Chippies! They donate to the local food shelf and give jobs to the Downs syndrome kids in the neighborhood. Here the toddler and I buy one loaf of their whole wheat bread, paying $3.50 for it but gladly, since the owners have fourteen adopted children and mill their own organic spelt. Five minutes gets us out the door.

Back home after a refreshing and energy-renewing stroll, the toddler plays with the generous and sweet-tempered 11-year-old while I make chicken and potato curry, steam the green beans, set out the bread, crack open the wine.

Superguy comes home and we have a fabulous family meal.

The children do the dishes willingly.

World's Messiest Mom Joins Blog

No more guilt, that's my new motto. As I stare at the heap of children's books in front of the bookshelf, as I avoid the mountain of laundry fermenting on the floor of the revolting laundry room, I pause and take a moment.

Since this is the guilt no more blog, I need to be a founding member, since my house and my brain both provide templates of guilt-no-more housekeeping and thinking, respectively. I think of it as a charitable outreach to all those people who have guilt over the less than perfect state of their organizational lives.

You in the family all know who I am. Hopefully, when Superguy (the DH) shows me how to use our technology, I will post photos and you can all lean back and heave one large sigh of relief and say to your spouses, "At least our house isn't THAT BAD."

Happy "Valentine's" Day!

Happy Valentine's Day, all! Although, to be technical, Valentine's Day was actually yesterday. And if we are going to be really technical, yesterday wasn't really "Valentine's Day" either - it was Cyril and Methodius Day (as mom so helpfully and accurately pointed out). Valentine's day was taken away from him sometime ago, because, let's face facts here , we don't even really know who this St. Valentine IS who has become the Catholic equivalent of Cupid these days. There were Sts. Valentine - several of them, and they seem to have been Roman-era martyrs, but we don't really know more than that, and it does seem a little unfair to have a Feast Day celebrating "That one unspecified Holy guy who had a very common Roman Name." It makes much more sense to give a day to those stalwart (and historically specific) men who converted the Slavs and gave them the beauty/oddity that is the Cyrillic alphabet!!
SO, Happy belated Cyril and Methodius Day!!! Dobrey Dyen!!!