I have a guest post up at Work It, Mom.  It’s all about potty training when your kid is in daycare.  Please go check it out and leave me a comment or 2!

Also, today is my older sister’s birthday.  She gets to spend it on vacation in Hilton Head – lucky girl.  Happy Birthday, Jill!!

When we were pregnant the first time we debated names. Since we didn’t know what we were having we had to pick 2. The boy name was set in stone as it’s a combination of family names that I’ve wanted for years; I even had to fight my sister for one of the names. I won, the name is mine – she got the hutch from our grandmother’s dining room instead.

For the girl, the middle name was chosen already (it’s a family thing) but first name was up for debate. Sophie was usually at the top of the list, but I can’t remember the others. But neither of us were married to any of them. Towards the end of the pregnancy, Mark brought up the M name and it stuck. When we learned in the delivery room it was a girl, Mark rattled off the chosen name immediately. And now at almost 3 ½ I can’t imagine her as anything else. She is named perfectly.

So here we are, pregnant with a boy and we’ve known from that ultrasound what the name would be. However, the order of the names – which would be the first name and which would be the middle name – was up for debate. The order that I had always had in my head is now troubling me for a few reasons. First of all, the name I fought my sister for, the name I always imagined being the first name is an extremely popular boy name. It has been for years and is likely to be for years to come. Given the commonality of our last name, I fear that using it as the first name will be akin to naming him “John Smith”.

The next concern is that this name also begins with an M and having 2 kids and a husband all with M names makes me cringe. I know plenty of people do this on purpose but I find it silly. But is this enough reason not to use the name? Will I eventually get used to having two M children?

The other name – the one originally slated for the middle name – is much more unique and can be heard as somewhat ethnic. The nickname especially is one you don’t hear too often in our neck of the woods. I like that, but it might drive the kid nuts.

I know we could always go through with the original combination order but call the kid by his middle name. Mark went by his middle name as a child and my brother has gone by his middle name for his entire life. But then why not give the child the name you want as a first name to begin with?

There is one last thought – the initials. Using the M name as a first name would produce the initials MAD which I think is awesome. AMD is not as awesome and also brings to mind the image of some obscure multi-national company.

So help us decide – what would you do? Would you use the M name so 3 out of 4 in the family have M names? Call the kid by his middle name? Or would you reverse the order and have what was always thought as the middle name become the first?

I hate vegetables.  There I said it.  I’m 32 years old and I don’t eat anywhere close to the daily recommended 3-5 servings.  If I get 3-5 servings a week I’m lucky.
 
I blame this on my mother, who made us kids eat veggies that made us gag.  Broccoli is my main nemesis since she used to drown it in melted Cheeze-Wiz and make us clean our plates.  The Cheeze-Wiz wasn’t the problem – I liked the stuff, but I clearly remember swallowing whole chunks of broccoli with a swig of milk like I was taking a vitamin.  I gagged the entire time. 

I want to like vegetables – I love walking through the farmers market in the summer and lusting after all the fresh, beautiful goodness in the stands. Who can resist the dewy piles of fresh asparagus, green beans, ramps, beets, turnips and squash? But despite several attempts in my adult life to like them, I just don’t. I can do lettuces and fresh spinach, any pepper that’s not green, carrots, tomatoes, and celery.  I don’t mind cauliflower if it’s roasted with olive oil and a fair helping of parmesan.  I might enjoy a spring pea or two, but only when they are in season.  The list pretty much stops there.

So I take multi-vitamin, eat lots of fruit and call it a day. I don’t usually stress over it.  But, being pregnant I’m paying much more attention to what I eat. With M I had a “green smoothie” just about everyday and I had them for breakfast often when I was on Weight Watchers.  This go around I haven’t been that good at making them, especially since I never feel like eating.  (True story! I’m the odd pregnant woman who gets very few cravings and feels like eating is more of a chore then a joy. The only think I want is milk…glasses and glasses of milk).

Inspired by Kyle Roth’s tweets about his family’s new smoothie tradition along with reading this post by Mir I got back into the smoothie swing.  I love green smoothies as you absolutely cannot taste the “green” part at all.  I also love that I can get in a host of daily requirements all in one swoop.  The best part is that M has taken a liking to them as well which means more veggies for her, too!

Here’s my basic formula for my favorite flavor combo:
One whole orange, peeled
One whole banana, peeled
Handful of raw (no sugar) frozen strawberries (about a ¾ cup)
1 serving/scoop vanilla protein powder – I prefer whey
As much fresh, baby spinach as you can stuff in the blender – I would say about 3 big handfuls or 2-3 cups
Some orange juice or water, depending on what you have – to thin to desired consistency

It looks like pond sludge but it’s mighty tasty and packs in 3 servings of fruit and 2 servings of veggies:

If I have it on hand, I’ll also add a healthy dose of flaxseed oil.  If I’m out of the protein powder or if I don’t want it (when the smoothie is a snack rather then a meal) I’ll replace it with a little vanilla extract.  And, after reading Mir’s post I sought out some Chia Seeds (Salba) at Whole Foods – they are in the supplement/wellness area – and have started adding about 2 tablespoons of those as well. 

This makes enough for a large drink for me and a smaller one for M and has become our morning breakfast. It really does keep me satisfied until at least lunch, and it makes me feel so much better about my overall nutrition. Plus, it’s less than 400 calories, gives me 1/3 of my daily goal of 60-70 grams of protien (when I add the powder) and lots of healthy omega-3 fatty acids.

Go over to my review page for notes from M’s first circus and get a discount code for your own tickets.

Mark has a man cold* so he stayed home from work yesterday.  When I called to check on him around 4:30 and see if he needed me to pick anything up on the way home he said no.  But then, just before he hung up I asked “You’re going to pick up M, right?” (Because pick-up is his gig, I do morning drop off).  He answered “Oh…I wasn’t planning on it – can you do it?” Thus began my crazy evening.

This was the day we needed to pick up the prints of M’s 3 year old photos by 6:00 and there was no way it was going to happen if I stayed in the office until 5:00 and had to go pick her up. I went and told my very kind, understanding and generous boss (who is also a mother and wife totally gets it and I love working for her) who said I could leave early.  I go to get the girl who had yet another potty accident (a story to be blogged about later) and was wearing some of her back-up pants.  These happened to be hand-me-down leggings that are about 6 years old, faded, dated and about 4 inches too short.  Oops! Guess it’s time to restock the daycare cubby with new clothes in the correct size.

So I load up my little ragamuffin-in-flood-pants and realize I need the payment paperwork in order to actually pick up the photo prints.  So I head home, calling Mark to tell him to meet me in the driveway with the papers – which he had in his laptop bag as this was his chore to do – and a snack of peanut butter crackers for M.  Then we retrace our path back northeast and I recognize that taking the expressway during rush hour would mean certain failure so I hit the back roads.  I pull into the parking lot of the Target where the photo studio is located at about 5:30 (don’t judge – I had a massive coupon and the photos are way better then I expected. Cheap formal photos are a good thing).  As I get the girl out of her carseat I find that she did not so much eat her snack as lick off the peanut butter and discard the crackers all over the back seat.  Wonderful.

We hurry inside and I drag her past Halloween and princess displays (why does Cinderella have to be on everything?) to the Photo Studio.  I love the photos and as I’m admiring them I don’t see M pull a couple of sheets off the counter and proceed to mark them up with peanut butter smears.  The very nice Target lady offers to re-print them for free; I will just need to pick them up in 10 days.  Awesome. 

I grab some meds for the man-cold and do a quick look at the toddler girls clothing section where I find a pile of knit pants on clearance for $2.  New daycare back-up pants – Score!  Some of the prints are kind of fugly up but I load up with 4 of them, at least they will be long enough for her.  During the 2 minutes I am choosing the pants, M is wandering in and out of the clothing racks and I find her stuck in the center of one.  I haul her out and we walk the gauntlet that is the front of the store (again with all the princess stuff!) and I have to physically drag her away from the rack of shiny pink princess purses to get in line.  Here M promptly latches on to some $5 princess mini-doll and I have to bribe her to put it back. 

Back out to the parking lot where I’m trying to juggle 2 bags while keeping a firm grip on M’s hand and simultaneously trying not to crease the envelopes of photo prints.  I buckle her in the car and call Mark to ask about dinner.  It’s already 6:00 and M is hungry. He doesn’t want anything so I tell him that we are going to stop somewhere for dinner. 

Because it lacks any forethought or planning I decide to just turn into a McDonalds and M is ecstatic at the thought of her Happy Meal toy.  As we are crossing the parking lot I glimpse our reflection in a window. Her with wild hair, too-short pants and bright pink shoes; me with ill-fitting maternity pants (I don’t need them yet but the thought of an elastic waist sounded good that morning…but they are truly horrible pants), my in-need-of-a-cut hair pulled into a haphazard and crooked ponytail and my makeup is long gone.  We were quite the motley pair and I had to laugh at our image.  Once inside the first set of doors, M pried loose from my grip and ran straight into the inner glass door.  She hit so hard she bounced off and all I could do was laugh…really hard.   She wasn’t hurt and didn’t shed a tear but was a bit stunned, and she couldn’t figure out why I was laughing.  I scooped her up and we held each other tight, both of us laughing out loud for a minute.

She kept bringing up her run-in with the door throughout dinner and the whole episode made me purposely slow down and enjoy my one-on-one time with her. The rest of the night was pretty uneventful, but given the unhurried pace of my girl’s eating we didn’t get home until 7 which is the start of bedtime.  As I sat in her room for the next hour, waiting for her to fall asleep (again, a post for another day) I kept thinking over the 2 ½ hours we spent, just my girl and me, and had to smile.  From our disheveled appearance to my constant chirping of “hold my hand!” and “you need to listen!” it was a rushed and exhausting round of errands. But, of all things, a leisurely dinner at a fast food joint gave me a little perspective.  Sounds like a perfect evening to me.

*he really is pretty sick, but the man-cold stereotype still holds true.

——-
Don’t forget I’m giving away a 4-pack of tix to the opening night of Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey’s “Zing Zang Zoom” at the Q over on my review page. You have one more day to enter!

There is a little contest for Cleveland-area folks over on my reviews page.  If you are a local, go see what you can win!

I’m guest blogging about the re-entry to the real world after a vacation over at Chef’s Widow today.  Go check it out.

Three years ago today, exactly at the time I am writing this, M was born after about 4 hours of labor.  She gave me an easy pregnancy and had a pretty easy birth. 3:03 PM on September 23.  I really do think 3 is her magic number.

Today she’s not so easy but my goodness is she a lot of fun.  Her imaginative stories, her budding love for jokes, an impressive memory and the constant singing have her dad and me laughing all day.  It’s not all rosy – she tends to not listen (at all), still has multiple potty accidents each week and hates to go to sleep – but the good far outweighs the bad.

Right now she LOVES to be outside – which is why our beach vacation was so perfect – and is getting really into drawing.  She likes to play tag and hide-and-seek and ride her tricycle and put stickers on anything and everything.  She is really into princess stories but we do our best to make sure things aren’t all-princess-all-the-time.  She would eat spaghetti everyday if we let her. She loves to change up the words in a song to see if we are paying attention. Every night we have to act out Sandra Boynton’s Barnyard Dance before settling down to sleep.

I really can’t get enough kisses from her each day. Her curls are wild because she refuses to wear barrettes or pigtails. She loves to twirl and dance. She’s our Magpie and she’s THREE!

Still around…this past week was crazy.  A night in Green Bay, WI (smaller then I thought, flat, lots of cheese) along with getting back into the swing of the school schedule and random life has kept me away from this blog.

We are getting ready for our fall trip to Hilton Head and we cannot wait – last year we went in late October and it was nice but too chilly to swim outside.  This year it should be in the low 80s everyday.  And since Labor Day will have passed, we expect it to be just as empty as last year.  So this coming week will include a ton of laundry, packing, making lists and trying to get the house into shape before departure.  One week after we get home will be M’s 3rd (THRID!! OMG!) birthday party, so there’s a lot to do.

Posting will most likely be sparse for the next 2 weeks – but I’ll never be far away from the crack that is Twitter.

Yes, I know…I said I don’t like posting about politics.  But you know what? I just can’t sit here anymore and be branded by some as “brainwashed” or be told I “drank the kool-aid” because I happen to believe that universal healthcare is a good thing.  I work in a hospital and everyday I see and hear from both sides – the extremely rich who come here from all corners of the world and the poor and grateful who have leveraged every penny of credit to afford treatment.

And right now, the thought rattling around in my head (which was inspired by this post, which doesn’t directly make the same connection) is “If we were talking about education, would the argument be different?”  Because, just like healthcare, no where in the Constitution does it say that I as a tax payer have to pay for public schools.  And it doesn’t say anywhere in that document that the US has to provide free and compulsory schooling to everyone. Education itself isn’t even mentioned in the Constitution or the Amendments.

But we do pay for it even if you don’t use it or like it. It’s a “public option” if you will and while some may choose to pay additional funds to send kids to a private school, we as a society provide a State and Federal government-run school system for every child in the country.  And yet, I hear no one yelling “that’s blatant Socialism!” over our education system.

Our system of public education has downfalls, that’s for sure.  Here in Ohio our schools are still illegally funded after our funding system via local property taxes was declared by the courts to be unconstitutional in 1997.  And yet we still continue to pay our taxes year after year and only really grumble when a new levy comes up. Public schools have not destroyed the private school system. 89% of kids in this state use the public option of schooling while the other 11% still pay into the public funding structure and pay additional funds to attend private schools. Choices exist even in a government-run compulsory education system.

I used to work for one of those private schools.  Not every kid there is a rich kid.  There are plenty who have families who leveraged every penny of credit and aid to afford tuition. But when the going got tough they weren’t faced with the option of no schooling at all – they had the public system to fall back on. If their kid was diagnosed with a learning disability that the private school couldn’t handle, they weren’t told “tough luck –it’s a pre-existing condition. Good luck finding help.” And no one has ever had to have a car wash to send their kid to kindergarten.

It can be argued that both education and healthcare are answers to the call to “promote the general welfare” of our people as laid out in the preamble of the Constitution. So why are some people so perfectly happy to accept one and say they are “terrified” of the other?