Still Here

Williamsburg, 2014

Nothing to report!

I am making up errands, really, like buying this little present for Axel from the new arrival (we're in a big duck phase right now.) It's sunny and frozen out and, yay, we're expecting another blizzard on Sunday night.

We've been having some delicious Blue Apron meals, watching (more) Friday Night Lights, and chatting about how best to make use of Will's paternity leave, which he can use any time in the first year. Since I'm a freelancer, I get zip, but it's still nice to know we'll have some good time together as a family of four in the next year.

Axel is doing well. I got him a new fuzzy blanket and pillow for his crib from Little Giraffe, which he's loving. These things are insanely soft and trimmed in satin like my baby blankets of yore. If it's good enough for Suri and the Garner-Afflecks, it's good enough for Axel...I might need one of the adult-sized ones.

He's been a little needier and naughtier of late. Instead of waking up at 7:45ish (I know, we got lucky), he's been up at around 6:30 each morning for a few weeks now, moaning a bit at night (teething?), and jumping precariously on the couch for kicks.

He's a little more sensitive lately too, but I think all of this may have more to do with all the developmental strides that happen around this age than with the notion of a new sibling. I don't think it really has anything to do with the new baby concept, since he's been getting just as much attention as usual, though who knows what really goes down in the mind of an 18 month old.

11211 Love

Williamsburg, 2013

A gorgeous Friday and a thunderstormy Saturday around these parts.

We went to the garden center on Metropolitan (behind Crest hardware) and got some veggies for our roof plot (but did not see Franklin the pig); checked out a hydrangea and crab apple tree that might work on our deck; had a delicious lunch thanks to Blue Apron; and popped into the new children's shoe shop, Wonderwolf.

I finished Homeward Bound. Hard to distill what's actually a very nuanced book, but I liked it very much and saw my own dilemmas in its pages.

A few points that resonated, or made me think:

A lot of this glorification of the domestic sphere has to do with Gen Y's sense that the corporate world has failed them; that (for men and women) working 60+ hour weeks is incompatible with a balanced life; that there must be something else. That a sad Amy's Organic burrito heated up in the microwave after a twelve hour work day isn't quite cutting it. It's no surprise, then, that a lot of otherwise ambitious people fantasize about checking out and moving to Vermont to make cheese.

That said, a lot of what's called "dropping out" or "opting out" isn't exactly that. You read a lifestyle blog that glorifies the charms of a folksy, cozy, stay at home mom life...but if that blogger is earning $60k writing about their chili recipes, they're not so much a stay at home mother who has dropped out of the work force as they are a small business owner. Just because it doesn't look like work doesn't mean it isn't. It's sometimes a new phenomenon that isn't exactly like the return to '50s values it may appear to be.

The roots of the hyper-natural parenting movement have to do with a disappointment in "the system." If there are scares about Big Food, people feel they must make their own organic food. If there is no reliable, affordable day care, if you only get 6 weeks of unpaid maternity leave, if, ultimately the sacrifice (and the math) doesn't add up, maybe you quit your job and become an attachment parent or simply "lean out" for a few years.

And maybe you embrace doing so....but that doesn't mean you would have made the same decisions if there were more options to fuse gratifying paid work with raising small children.

The author talks a lot about highly educated women who've rejected conventional careers and taken big pay cuts to sell knitted goods on Etsy in the name of work life balance, perhaps making do with less to make it all happen. But she explores the trend with a cautionary note. If few women are left in the corporate or political worlds and thus well positioned to fix a broken system, the hard-won battles of previous generations of women may be undercut.

If everyone, say, home schools their children, or quits their job due to inadequate maternity leave, who is going to be around to make the public schools better or push for family-friendly leave policies from a position of power?

Just the other day I was talking to a friend who has turned down several promising job offers because the company wouldn't let her work one day a week at home (and thus see her toddler a few more hours a week.) So the company loses a great worker, and my friend freelances, making some economic and personal sacrifices in the process.

All in all, a good read.

Dinner, Solved (Part One)

via Serious Eats

A friend had a code for a free week of delivery from Blue Apron, a subscription service that sends you the ingredients and recipe cards for three complete meals a week.

I had all but forgotten about signing up to give it a try it until the rather impressive box arrived yesterday (handy, because we had exactly zero plans for dinner and hadn't been able to get to the grocery store because we were away over the weekend.) You can sign up for a meat and poultry service or a vegetarian service.

We wound up making a delicious chicken satay with rice and a green tomato salad. My pictures didn't really turn out, but basically, everything in the recipe is pre-portioned like this:

via Katie at the Kitchen Door

You can check out Katie at the Kitchen Door for another review. The meat comes from Pat LaFrieda, a very fancy butcher in New York. It was all very straightforward and I liked the fact that we weren't going to waste any produce or esoteric oils (so often we have a giant bunch of cilantro that wilts in the fridge because we just needed a few sprigs.) The tiny bottles of things like sesame oil or mirin were pretty darn cute as well.

Will and I love to cook, and so this service suited us; it feels like you're really making dinner from scratch (but without any advance planning required.) We were saying a month or so of this would be the perfect gift for someone with a new baby, with the caveat that they'd have to like to cook in the first place to find this a real time saver.

I felt a bit guilty about all of the packaging that arrives with it, but I was glad to hear the box lining is biodegradable. In any case, the results were far better than my usual there's-nothing-in-the-fridge go-to, turkey tacos. The meals are portioned for two people, so the one drawback is no leftovers.

Like Farm to Baby, our baby food delivery service, this is definitely a luxury I'd only really justify because I'm working full time. Hey, whatever gets you through the week, right?