For the first year of his life, Gunne Bear napped about four hours a day. This was broken up into three naps at first, then consolidated down to two.

At a few months past a year old, he went down to one nap a day, this one clocking in at three hours. Losing that hour was a big adjustment for me, since I tend to work while he sleeps to maximize the amount of time we can hang while he’s awake.

Now, at a couple of months past his second birthday, we just shaved an hour off that nap. As of today, we are down to a two hour nap and I’m really, seriously mourning the loss of that hour. I mean, I know it’s only an hour, but do you know what can get DONE in one hour?

In just one short hour I can:

Research and write an article
Vacuum my entire house
Take a nap of my own
Bake bread, clean the entire kitchen and hang out the wash to dry in the yard
Go through my entire blog reader

And now, that hour has been stolen from me. Now, granted all the items on that list (minus the nap) can still get done while he’s awake, it just takes a lot longer than an hour because everything has to be broken into ten minute segments that are punctuated by calls of MamaMamaMama!

On the other hand, if this pattern of settling into a napping pattern for a year, then dropping an hour holds, I can count on at least two hours for the next year, followed by one hour for the following year followed by a one hour “quiet time” for the year after that.

Maybe I shouldn’t start mourning what I’ve lost too quickly.

MommieV once said in a post that she often thought of the powers that be in charge of toddler and baby sleep looked a lot like Lily Tomlin as Edith Ann in that big rocking chair. This struck me as hilarious and I, too, refer to the Gods of Sleep et al. as “Lily”.

For a couple of weeks there, Gunne Bear was waking up at night about every other night. I never knew what the problem was; he would ask for milk and to sit with me in the rocking chair for five minutes, then he went right back to sleep. All inquiries as to what the problem might be (are you too hot? too cold? scared?) were answered with, “Yeah,” so I really had no idea.

Gradually, though, just as I was starting to get used to being woken up in the middle of the night again, he stopped. Went back to sleeping well through the night. I chalked it up to one of those developmental things that kids do, you know how they stop sleeping, start acting crazy, then everything goes back to normal but they’re now fluent in Spanish or something.

So yesterday I happened to remark to The Viking that Gunne Bear had been sleeping well lately and that I figured we were through the worst. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I started kicking myself:

Lily had heard that. And she was going to take me down a peg.

Sure enough, at 11:51 last night, the screaming started. Milk, cuddles, adjust the fan, adjust the curtains, turn on the nightlight, back to bed. Except now I can’t sleep, because I had stopped being used to being woken in the middle of the night. Ugh.

I finally fall back asleep, only to be woken up AGAIN at 3:40 in the morning by more screaming. This time I was so tired I was nauseous. He requested milk. I told him no. We cuddled for a minute, I put him back to bed and fell back into mine exhausted but unable to sleep.

I missed my morning yoga class and have been out of sorts all day.

So.

Lily, I profusely apologize for having gotten smug about my kid’s sleep. I will never take his sleep for granted ever again. Please allow me to grovel here at your feet for a few minutes; I swear that I am done complaining about his sleep problems as well as rejoicing when they end.

Lily, I am your bitch. Please let me sleep tonight.

Thank you to Yahoo! Mail for sponsoring this post about staying connected. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

My grandparents had the kind of relationship that everyone secretly wishes for. They met met young, fell deeply in love and were madly in love with another and inseparable for nearly 60 years. When my grandfather finally passed on after a decade of illness, my grandmother was alone.

Because she lives far from the rest of the family, my father decided that she needed a computer and internet service to keep in touch with the rest of us. He sent her an iMac and my cousin Kate and I were tagged to go in tandem and get it set up for her. I was to go first and set up the computer, get her used to it and onto the internet, then Kate was to step in and teach her how to send emails.

The plan was simple in theory but a little tougher in execution.

The mouse completely bewildered her. She couldn’t seem to keep it straight and kept flipping it upside down so when she scrolled up the cursor went down. She also spoke to it constantly, “Come on honey. Come on sweetie, please work for me.” It was so hilariously touching to watch.

Finally I managed to set the scroll speed on the mouse to snail and turn everything on the computer into a button because she couldn’t manage a double click. We go online and the first thing she requests is to go to Emeril’s webpage. Hookay.

I left at the end of my weekend stay feeling a little apprehensive that my grandmother was ever going to get this whole internet thing. She was in her 80s after all and this was a big advancement for someone who still used a typewriter.

Kate evidently had better luck than I did, though, because the following weekend, I got my first email from my Nana. It contained no capital letters, no punctuation and was all one single block of text with no breaks. But it was an email; my grandmother was officially part of the 21st century.

Her emails have improved slightly over the last few years. She’s found the shift key and the period, but “enter” still must elude her because each email is still one big block of text.

I never care, though; opening my inbox to find an email from my Nana always makes my day completely, even if I get eyestrain looking at it.

The best part about my Nana being online, though, is the fact that although she has never met my son, she gets to watch him grow up through digital photographs emailed to her.

Granted it would be a lot easier for her, I’m sure, if I could merely string them across a clothesline to her, but given my lack of follow through on printing the many photos I take, this is honestly the best way to get her involved in his life.

Now. If I could only get her on Skype…

The trip the Farmer’s Market the other day had kind of bummed me out. I had been so used to our “normal” that I literally forgot that it isn’t what most people consider normal. That sort of shook me out of it and I was feeling out of sorts for a few days.

So today we went down to the local chocolate shop where a politician we support was making an appearance. The chocolate shop had set out tons of bowls of chocolate for the visitors to eat while we waited. So I did what I always do; I explained to the owner that my little boy had Celiac and allergies and could she tell me if anything there did not contain wheat.

She said everything set out did contain wheat, and I was about to say, Well, OK, he doesn’t need any chocolate, when she asked if he could have plain milk chocolate. I said he could and she went over to a display and pulled out a Chocolate Moose Pop for him. When I tried to pay her for it, she waved me away explaining that all the guests were entitled to a treat.

This woman with that one small gesture, made me feel so much better. Seriously. Never mind the fact that Gunne Bear was in the Boba on my back and as I spoke to the politician my passenger was busy smearing chocolate all over my back (seriously, other people there were gasping when they saw the state of us, but I thought it was a small price to pay); this woman had just shrugged and treated us as “normal”.

So. Unsolicited plug: Chocolate Moose in Salem, NH has the best customer service and chocolate in the area. If you are nearby, I highly recommend a visit.

Yesterday afternoon, in an attempt to get some produce with flavor, Gunne Bear and I headed down to our local Farmer’s Market. It isn’t very big in July, but we were able to score some great squash, fresh raspberries, maple syrup candy and tomatoes.

I had just headed over to pick up some (unbelievably flavorful apples!) when the shopkeeper at the apple crisp stand nearby holds a cup out toward Gunne Bear and says loudly, “Your little boy wants some apple crisp!”

I wanted to kick her in the teeth.

First, I realize that she has no way of knowing, but my kid can’t eat apple crisp. So she was essentially holding something out to him that he couldn’t eat.

Next, Gunne Bear was hanging out in the Boba on my back, eating maple candy as fast as he could cram it into his mouth and informing me that we should, “Buy four apples,” so I seriously doubt he had even realized that there WAS apple crisp, let alone that such a thing would be offered to him.

Finally, this was the most obnoxious kind of manipulation. Get the kid to start whining for it until the parent breaks down and buys some. Unfortunately in our case, that wasn’t freaking going to happen.

Luckily I was able to distract Gunne Bear (Would you like to put the apples in our bag?) but that didn’t stop me from wanting to go over and tear this woman a new one. She had no way of knowing our particular situation, but using the kid to get to the parent was low and it really angered me.

Not to mention the fact that while I have mostly adjusted to our crazy diet and environment, I make our bread, I make our cleaning supplies, we cloth diaper, all to manage my kids severe allergies, I still get broadsided sometimes when something like this happens. I CAN’T buy my kid prepared foods without scrutinizing the kitchen where it was made and the ingredient list. And to be reminded of it in the middle of the Farmer’s Market kind of hurt.

I seriously doubt that I will be buying ANY apple crisp from this woman this year, whether Gunne Bear is there with me or not.

We go through lots of what my husband refers to as “peanut butter holders” in our house. Apples, bananas, spoons and freshly baked, homemade bread. Of these, though, apples get by far the most use, simply because we use them for things other than holding our peanut butter.

We eat dozens of apples each week, cooked into our hot cereal, with peanut butter, with cheese and avocado, baked on pork chops, chopped into salads, eaten straight out of hand and cooked down into gallons of sauce for Gunne Bear.

There is one, perfect apple that meets all of our needs beautifully and that is the Macintosh apple. It tastes good cooked or raw and pairs beautifully with everything. There is only one problem with this apple and that’s the fact that it’s unavailable in July.

So this year, I have been bringing home a different variety of apple to taste each week. Some are delicious on their own, but cook down horribly, others have no flavor no matter what we do to them. So far, we have tried the following:

Jazz Apples: Delicious alone, with cheese or with peanut butter. Tasteless in hot cereal and a very weak, watery applesauce.

Pink Lady Apples: A variation of the Jazz Apple, it preformed identically.

Empire Apples: We nearly have a winner! Sweet, good in hot cereal, makes a passable applesauce, holds up to cheese and peanut butter… it vanished from all the stores surrounding us just as I declared it the winner. Boo.

Fuji Apples: No flavor. No amount of peanut butter, apple pie spice, cooking or cheese can give it flavor, either. Fail.

Braeburn Apples: Mild flavor, a little mealy for eating alone but disguised well by peanut butter and cheese. Cooks down to mush in hot cereal but makes a pretty decent applesauce. This apple gets a pass, sort of.

Royal Gala: Hard and tasteless.

I have a sinking feeling that by the time I discover an apple that works, it will be October and we will be apple picking, bringing home huge bags full of Macs, so this whole experiment will be in vain. Perhaps the key is simply to dig a root cellar and stock my own Macs for year.

Thank you to Yahoo! Mail for sponsoring this post about staying connected. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

On Monday Morning December 5, 2006 I walked into my office and announced to the room at large that I had met the man I was going to marry.

The room exploded as my co-workers began firing questions at me – What was his name? What was he like? What did he look like?

He’s from Sweden, I answered. A little taller than me, red hair, green eyes. We met at a Salon, so we are totally philosophically compatible.

I showed them the goofy photo I had snapped with my cell phone.

When are you going to see him again, my co-workers asked me. And I had to admit that I didn’t know; we hadn’t exchanged information.

The room exploded again, this time with anguish that I had obviously let such a good catch slip through my fingers. I was confident I would see him again, though, even if it was the following month at the next Salon.

A few hours later during a lull in the work day, I decided to spend a few minutes checking email to pass the time. I opened my personal email account quietly, trying not to attract the attention of my bosses, and promptly let out a scream, leaping from my chair and dancing around the room.

He had emailed me.

His email explained that he had looked me up on the Salon’s Yahoo! Group and pulled my email address from this. He hoped I didn’t mind his taking the initiative to contact me.

I wish I had a way to email him back a video of my co-workers and I doing a victory dance around the showroom to celebrate. Or at the very least, this one would have sufficed:

As it was, I needed to spend a good thirty minutes calming myself down before I felt ready to respond. In hindsight, I perhaps let myself cool off a little too much, because the email I sent him back apparently came off a little frosty and stunned him into further silence until the next Salon came around. It didn’t matter though.

(Again where that video might have come in a little handy, given the misunderstanding and all. (Not to mention the fact that that cartoon when it accompanies Edith Piaf is one of my all time favorite videos about the wonder of missed connections and love, but I digress.))

I was so jazzed about his being into me enough to look up my email and reach out that I was at the next Salon 30 minutes early, sitting facing the door and waiting. The minute he walked in we locked eyes. I walked up to him, “You never answered my email…”

We’ve been together ever since.

Today is July 5th. In just three short months we will begin trying for baby number two. I am scared completely shitless.

I did not have an easy pregnancy last go round because my hip dysplasia causes all sorts of issues like pain, more pain, placental abruption accompanied by pain and a side of pain. In an attempt to combat said pain, I have increased my yoga workouts to 5 days a week. So far, no pain, which is good considering that until I increased those workouts, I was in pain post delivery for 18 months.

On the other side of things, I’m mostly terrified of having another baby with all the allergy/asthma/eczema/health issues that Gunne Bear has had. A lot of research has brought to light some things that we might have been able to do to prevent some of this. Needless to say, I will be following all of it the next go round.

However, as I prepare to get pregnant again and my stomach knots up at the thought of the struggles my sweet boy has had, I find myself thinking that maybe I should start doing something sooner. Like now.

I make all of Gunne Bear’s food from scratch. I even bake my own bread three times a week. He eats completely clean because I don’t know what might cause a reaction. There are so many things we have to avoid that I can’t possibly feed him something full of chemicals because what if one of those is also a problem? And how would we figure out which one?

So as I get ready to start trying for another pregnancy, I’ve started eating clean, too. I gave up coffee (hold me), sausage, fake sugar and all processed foods. I’m working on cutting down on the amount of cheese I eat (I eat a shocking amount of cheese) but quite frankly I need something comforting in my diet just now and, well, I think the cheese consumption might just stay where it is.

Now, nothing that I have read (and I have read it all, trust me) says that eating clean before/during a pregnancy can prevent these problems. This is all me. Because if my next baby has celiac and food allergies and we have to do breathing treatments at 2am because he gets a cold and suddenly starts wheezing and turning blue, well then fine, I will deal with it. But. But, at least if I do every single thing I can think of to prevent it, I’ll be able to sleep at night when I go back to bed from those 2am wake up calls and not lie there wondering what I could have done to spare him some of this pain.

Sorry for the radio silence here; work kicked into high gear with the whole Google index reset and now all my employers are scrambling trying to figure out what to do. This means I write a whole wicked lot, but none of it is here. Additionally, we have been potty training so time has been even scarcer.

Gunne Bear and I are very tight. Very, very tight. We always have been; he’s a Mama’s Boy who is just like me personality wise so we kind of just “get” each other. Which is why I find it so hysterical that if anything, we have become even MORE bonded over the last week as we’ve started our potty training journey.

Please don’t get me wrong; this has also been messy (hilariously messy – as in, he tries on the potty for 10 minutes, does nothing then lets go in a huge flood all over the floor, or waits until I really have to go, then releases at the same time as me, but onto the floor in front of me), but it’s been one of the best weeks I’ve had as a parent.

I’m focused on nothing but him while he’s awake. No, “Just a minute while I vacuum!” or “Let me finish this email!” Just him and me. After about an hour of this, he figured it out, demanded, “Up!” and has barely had his pudgy pink feet touch the floor since. It’s been magical. (It also helps that he hasn’t had an accident since the second day so I don’t mind hauling him around naked!)

I haven’t been this focused on him and nothing but him since he was a newborn. The difference is that back then I stared at his sleeping form and wondered, “What do I do with it?” and now we have backyard adventures, we play trucks, bake bread together, paint and spend hours just snuggling up and reading, “Things That Go,” ad nauseum. (An aside to the writers of that book: Is Little Joe just messing with his parents or is he a victim of fetal alcohol syndrome that was dropped on his head as an infant? My husband and I argue this point daily.)

I fully expect to come out of this potty training experience with my son so bonded to my hip that he stays there even when my arms aren’t around him. And I’m really, really enjoying every minute of it.