Vanessa

Tired and Happy

April 12, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

Man, I am pooped. It has been a whirlwind of a couple weeks. With house hunting and Easter and my college friends coming into town this past weekend, I am really tired. But really happy. (Well, the house hunting doesn’t make me happy. It makes me really anxious and I feel like if I am not constantly checking the MLS then the perfect house is slipping through our fingers.)
Easter was great but that’s another post.

On Wednesday, 3 of my best friends from college came to Austin to finally meet the Squeaker. I love those girls. We has so much fun in school. And I had forgotten how different all of us are from each other. We have the business oriented, tough as nails one; the quirky, always up for an adventure musician; the hippy, gluten/dairy free screenwriter; and me, the mom. I miss them so much. I love hanging out with them. We didn’t get to do tons while they were here because we had to work around O’s nap/sleeping schedule but we managed to get some good stuff in.

$1 margaritas at El Arroyo on Thursday were amazing. It was the first margarita I have had since last Dec 2008. It was cold and salty and heavenly. I only had one and it was about 5oz but it was awesome.

Then on Friday night Kraft was on O duty and me and the girls went dancing at the Broken Spoke. We had so much fun. I loooove dancing but get super nervous because I am not good at it. So I spend most of the night nervous that someone is going to ask me to dance but secretly hoping they will because I love it. This place was great because it was just a bunch of old guys that take you for a spin around the dance floor then walk you back to your seat. Such gentlemen. No sleazy guys trying to hit on you. It was fun. I definitely want to go again.

O loved them. She did not sleep very well because she loved hanging out with them. I tried to put her to sleep at her regular time but she did not want to sleep. She wanted to be with everyone else. It’s funny how metiche (busybody) she is. Tonight was the first night since Wednesday that she has fallen asleep before 11pm.

So this is why I haven’t blogged in a while. Sorry if this one is kind of rambly. I’m tired and not witty at the moment. I got some good topics in my head though that I want to get out. Hopefully those will come in the next couple days.

For now, I’m just really thankful for my community of friends.

House Hunting and Specs

April 6, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

Image by Casey Serin via Flickr

I’ve been kinda flaky with blogging for the last week or so. I blame this on the fact that me and Brandon have been obsessed with combing trulia.com for houses.

We were on our way home from Mass a couple of Sundays ago and a house was on sale just down the street from St. Ignatius. They also were having an open house at that exact moment. Ok, we’ll bite. So we walked in and really liked it. It is in the exact location that we would love to live. When the Squeaker is old enough to go to St. Ignaitus, we could just walk her to and from school everyday. And it had a big backyard that we fell in love with. The idea of planting orange and avocado trees is almost too much to handle. And picturing having parties in that backyard. Love it. So we started just browsing for homes around the same area just to see some comparables (as any good HGTV watcher would know to do).

We set up an appt to see it again this past weekend. And just by chance a house on the next block over was having an open house. We saw the first one and then went to the open house. Uh, fell in looove with, not the first house, but this open house house. The second I walked in it seemed perfect. Open and light-filled. Heck, it even had a nursery with the most adorable mural of a hippo and monkeys and a toucan. My dad said the hippo has O’s eyes. It was a beautiful home.

So here we are not even thinking about buying a house and a week later finding one that feels like home. Things went super fast at this point. We contacted a realtor, got pre-qualified (which apparently you have to do) and put in an offer for the house today. Someone had already put in an offer before us but we knew we were offering more than them.

They didn’t take our offer. It all just happened so quickly and seemed so perfect that I felt like this is really what God wanted us to do. It just seemed very easy. Guess not. It is a bummer. But from the beginning I told myself that if this is what God had planned for us then it would work out.

I can’t help but feel personally offended by these homeowners, though. We met our realtor at the house today to do a walk through before putting in the offer and the mom came in with her baby twins. She was not warm or welcoming but instead seemed very flustered and irritated. Apparently the twins were not having anything to do with the walk they were on. But O was with me and she saw her. Who the heck can say no to the Squeaker? With those pudgy cheeks? Jerkfaces.

I got the call from our realtor about the rejection in the middle of Specs. Me and O were with our good friend, M. Specs was doing this thing where they offer samples of 30 beers and different cheeses and snacks they have. Brilliant is what it is. And yes, I was in fact that lady with a baby in a liquor store sampling beers. Don’t worry, if what I drank added up to half a beer I’d be surprised. No one seemed too offended. Had I gotten this news in any other place I feel that I would have been much more bummed. You can’t feel too bad while drinking free beer.

(Side note – please try Leinenkugels Berry Weiss or Summer Sandy beer. Delicious. Girly, but delicious.)

Oh well. I’m not sure if I want to continue the house search right now. I feel like maybe this is God telling us to back off. But I have been wrong about what God has planned for us before. Our realtor was very upbeat that there would be other fish in the sea. I guess we’ll see.

I’ll just keep dreaming about those orange trees.

Random

April 1, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

Image by Chris, Fiona, James, Ben, Numpty & Bruce via Flickr

Ok, here are just some random things that I want to note that aren’t really long enough for separate posts:

1) Chuggington – This is a cartoon that comes on at 9:30 on Playhouse Disney. The Kraft household watches it every morning. Kraft himself would probably watch it without the Squeaker because he likes it so much. O really likes it, too. I stick her in the Exersaucer in front of the TV while I finish up cleaning the kitchen and do dishes after breakfast (although, the dishes I’m washing are probably from dinner the night before). She will happily sit and watch the whole half hour of it. And whenever she starts getting a little fussy, if we sing the theme song to her it will usually buy us some time before she melts down. Awesome. Don’t be surprised if you hear us around Austin singing that song.

2) Another theme song – Can You Teach My Alligator Manners? This song is super catchy. It’s been stuck in my head all week. I can’t wait til O is old enough to appreciate this one. It’s pretty cute.

3) There was a link to this blog – Feministe – in the Austin Statesmen right after SXSW. It was the story of this woman trying to travel home from Austin. Uh, absolute worst I’ve ever heard. Give it a read and you’ll never complain at the airport again. [I only read this for the story. I have no idea what the rest of the blog is actually about.]

4) I’ve recently started reading the Commonweal blog. I came across an interesting story they mentioned that I thought is worth quoting:

“During a frustrating argument with a Roman Catholic cardinal, Napoleon Bonaparte supposedly burst out: “Your Eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?” The cardinal, the anecdote goes, responded ruefully: “Your majesty, we, the Catholic clergy, have done our best to destroy the church for the last 1,800 years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.”

It’s good to remember, during the ongoing sex abuse scandal, that the Holy Spirit works toward reconciliation and healing in the wake of many horrible actions and crises the Church endures.

Kohlrabi

April 1, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

Image by La Grande Farmers’ Market via Flickr

It’s been a while since I’ve spotlighted a weird veggie. We
got one in our CSA box last week and finally cooked it up yesterday.
It was tasty but I’m still not sure what kohlrabi tastes like since the
flavor got buried in egg and onion and ham (Kohlrabi Ham Bake).

One thing’s for sure, the recipe said to peel it before dicing
and cooking. I usually don’t peel my veggies and have found that it
works pretty well for me. Potatoes have much more nutrient value if
you eat the skins, if beets are small enough they are tender even with
the skins on, I just scrub carrots really well. It’s easier to wash
them well than to peel a bunch of them.

That being said, kohlrabi does
not fall into this category. I half-heartedly peeled it before cutting
it up and throwing it in the saute pan. Yuck. There were more than a
few bites that I got peel and it was fibrous and tough. Kinda like
chewing on burlap. Kraft said he didn’t get any of that but I suspect
he just didn’t know that it wasn’t supposed to be like that.

Interesting vegetable, though, be sure to peel it.

Small Triumphs

March 31, 2010 by Vanessa 1 Comment

Cover of "The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gent...

Cover via Amazon

I don’t know why I thought parenthood would be much different from my past jobs in terms of progress. I know I’ve had a short run as far as the job world is concerned but all my jobs have been working with people that don’t change/improve quickly. Being a Catholic Worker, a case manager for Meals on Wheels, a high school teacher, and now a mother, I’ve learned to revel in small victories.

It’s such a weird thing that you have to teach babies how to sleep. As essential as water, sleep is such a biological necessity that you would think that babies would instinctively do it. Nope. Especially not the Squeaker. She has been a bad sleeper from day one.

From the day she was born, she would not sleep by herself or put herself to sleep. Those few nights in the hospital consisted of me and Kraft sleeping off and on an hour to hold her because every time we’d put her in the little bassinet, she would start wailing.

When we brought her home. Same thing. She would not stay asleep unless she was in someone’s arms. For the first three weeks of her life, we alternated between having her sleep on her diaper pad in our bed between me and Kraft and in our arms. I would take the 1-4am shift and Kraft would take the 4-7am shift. We realized quickly that we needed more sleep than this.

Then I figured out how to sleep on the couch sitting up propped up by pillows while holding her so that she wouldn’t roll off of me during the night. This lasted a couple more weeks.

Then I found that if I rocked her for a couple hours until she was soundly asleep I could lay her down on our couch and lay down next to her and she’d stay asleep for 30mins or so until I’d have to rock her to sleep again. This lasted about another month. (She was 3 months old at the end of this stage.)

Then I could rock her for a couple hours and lay her down (extremely carefully) in our bed and she would stay asleep maybe an hour at a time. Of course she would wake up at the slightest noise. A car alarm going off, people walking by the apartment and talking too loudly, a cat meowing, anything would wake her up. So there I would go again to the rocking chair for a few more hours until she was sound asleep. I got so sick of this rocking chair. Cracker Barrel sure can sell a sturdy, cheap rocking chair but man is it uncomfortable and hard on the back. There were some nights that I totally thought I was going to go crazy from rocking for hours then putting her down only to wake up 5 minutes later.

One night out of sheer desperation I swaddled her. She had fought this like a fiend before this point. She would scream as if we were killing her when we had tried the swaddle previously. But magically this time, she was fine. In fact, she slept like 4 hours straight. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Between 3.5 and 4.5 months she started sleeping super well. She was sleeping about 5 hours stretches at night in a swaddle.

Then she started learning how to break out of the swaddle and by 5 months we couldn’t do it anymore. Damn. After coming to hate rocking O to sleep, I figured out how to nurse her to sleep lying down in our bed and then sneaking away when she was asleep. This still took forever but at least I could lay down during it and rest while trying to get her asleep. Now, of course, she cannot fall asleep unless she is nursing. She won’t even fall asleep rocking anymore, which while I hated rocking before, now means that Kraft cannot help with putting her to sleep. Damn, again.

For the last month we’ve been following Elizabeth Pantley’s No-Cry Sleep Solution techniques to wean O from having to nurse to sleep. Pantley said it would be a gradual weaning and, man, it sure is. Here we are one month later and we have made very little progress in that department.

However, yesterday was a glorious day. It took two hours to get O to finally fall asleep around 9pm. She did not wake up until 3:30am, at all. I kept going in to make sure she was still breathing because it was so unbelievable. Of course tonight she woke up 5 times in 4 hours but that is neither here nor there. She slept six and a half hours yesterday without waking up.

I will take this one small victory and pray for more in the near future.

USCCB response

March 27, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

CHICAGO - FEBRUARY 25: Cardinal Francis Georg...

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I am so happy that the USCCB issued this statement about Obama’s executive order. I think they said exactly what needed to be said. Here are the cliff notes that I felt laid my concerns in my previous post to rest:

1) The Church has always and will always call for “reform of our health care system so that all may have
access to the care that recognizes and affirms their human dignity.”

Universal health care is good. It is not Communism.

2) They “applaud the effort to expand health care for all”.

While they may not agree with everything in the bill, I’m glad they at least recognize that this a step toward something that benefits the common good.

3) The reason they have opposed the bill is because “the statute appropriates billions of dollars in new funding without
explicitly prohibiting the use of these funds for abortion, and it
provides federal subsidies for health plans covering elective abortions.”

This is a fair point. Congress is asking us to trust them that the funds will not go to abortions when there is not specific language in the bill saying this. I can see how the bishops would be weary of these promises.

4) The bishops “share fully the admirable intention of President Obama expressed in his
pending Executive Order, where he states, ‘it is necessary to establish
an adequate enforcement mechanism to ensure that Federal funds are not
used for abortion services.’

Also fair point. Obama saying that an “adequate enforcement mechanism” should be established to make sure funds aren’t used for abortion means that there is nothing like this in place nor does it give a plan how to put one in place.

5) But they “do not understand how an Executive Order, no matter how well intentioned, can substitute for statutory provisions.”

Point taken. We would all rest easier if the wording was just put in the bill.

6) The USCCB states that they and “many others will follow the government’s implementation of
health care reform and will work to ensure that Congress and the
Administration live up to the claims that have contributed to its
passage.”

Basically, we’ve got our eye on you, Obama and Congress. We pray that they live up to these promises.

7) “As bishops, we wish to recognize the principled actions of the pro-life
Members of Congress from both parties, in the House and the Senate, who
have worked courageously to create legislation that respects the
principles outlined above. They have often been vilified and have
worked against great odds.”

Thank you for saying this bishops. It cannot be easy to work in politics. Especially pro-life democrats have been “vilified” and I’m glad that the USCCB has recognized that.

I’m glad that the bishops came through. While I know they bishops were not responding to me, they answered my questions.

Thanks Mr. K for sending me this link.

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