TTT - Play

Today's tip is a simple one.  But one that I think we need to be reminded of often, especially with leading such busy lives.  It can be easy to get caught up in the day to day stresses of life and work and getting dinner on the table and picking up the toys around the house.

Don't forget to take time to play.  Sing silly songs (and shake the sillies out).  Run around in the rain.  Jump on the bed.  Make animal sounds with your 2 year old.

Tonight, we left the dinner plates on the table, the bags from our trip unpacked and the mail unopened.  Instead, we played together and sang Old McDonald while Lukas danced and jumped on the bed.

I smiled and laughed more than I have all day.  I hope this video makes you smile and reminds you to take time out to simply play.

Michigan Getaway

We've been in Michigan the past four days visiting Mr. Cob's family. It was a great trip. Relaxing. Recharging. Much needed.

A few pictures from the lake...

You’re Not Alone: Trying to Do It All

My new post on DrZ is up!  Please check it out and leave a comment, like, and/or share!  Being a working mom is not an easy gig!  Enjoy!

You’re Not Alone: Trying to Do It All

Serious Stuff Aside

If my blog had any sort of theme then this post would make no sense.  But it's not that sort of blog.  So I'm going to not talk about depression or Lukas or being a laywer or my mom-life or anything of any sort of substance for a second.  Because I have some breaking news to share.  Seriously, it's big.

Do you want to guess?

Go ahead, I'll wait.

I bet you didn't guess.

No, I'm not knocked up.

No, I am not the Weakest Link.

Ok, are you ready?

Here it is:  I have not washed my hair the last two days.  Today is day 3 of unwashed hair.

And yes, this is news.

I'm a wash your hair every day sort of girl. It is painfully obvious if I skip a day.

Or it was.

Until I found Suave Keratin Infusion Dry Shampoo.  A.mazing.  Seriously.  Go buy it.  You'll love it.  You'll be able to get ready for work in half the time without having to blow dry your hair every day.  Which is huge if you're trying to get a toddler dressed and ready for school or handling a little problem like your A/C backing up and stealthily seeping water down your walls.

Oh yeah, that.  Our A/C had a little hiccup.  Our house now sounds like a wind tunnel and is housing 5 industrial sized fans, two dehumidifiers and is missing part of the laundry room floor and door frame.  Thank goodness for homeowners insurance.

And dry shampoo.

Some days it's the little things.

And let's be honest.  I was glad to have the antidepressant prescription today too.

Dry shampoo and zoloft.  A winning combination for life's curveballs.

TTT - Toddler Eating

A friend recently wrote me an email asking about kid-friendly food advice.  Her email was something to the effect of: So my kiddo is starting to eat more and more table food, and I am tired of making the same old thing for dinner each night.  Do you have anything that you make for Lukas that you freeze or make on Sunday and have for the week?  Anything that he really likes?  Could I have the recipe? 

 

Great question.  And one I don't have a great answer for in my actual life, but I do have some thoughts on what I would do if I were doing everything I thought of doing.  Do you follow?  If not, keep reading. (And if you followed that then welcome to my world!)

 

So my typical evening goes something like this:

 

5pm leave work
5:15ish get to daycare
5:30ish leave daycare
6ish arrive home
6:30ish Mr. Cob arrives home
7:45/8 Lukas to bed
8:01 at the latest, full glass of wine in my hand

 

Lukas gets fed somewhere between the time we arrive home and the time he goes to bed.  This is helpful to you not at all, I know.  (Bear with me. I hope to have a tip in here somewhere.) Mr. Cob and I eat either with him (but usually not) or after he goes to bed.  I'd love it if we all always ate together, but we don't.  It is what it is.  If we are all eating together, I usually throw dinner together while Lukas reads books or plays with his dinosaurs, trains or a puzzle.  I attempt to keep the TV watching to the weekends.  He is old enough now to entertain himself for the 10 minutes it takes me to throw a meal togehter.  So if something takes longer than 10 minutes prep time, I tend to not make it.

 

So that's the when.  But I think the question was more tailored to the what.

 

With toddler picky eat habits starting early, Lukas' likes and dislikes seem to change daily.  So I don't worry too much about what he's eating or how well rounded his diet is.  I focus more on making sure he is eating something decent by not giving him the option of any "bad" food.  I don't cook fried food or offer him sugary treats at night.  I offer him at least one fruit or veggie with every meal and hope for the best. I also always give Lukas at least one thing on his plate that I know he will eat.  For a while I thought I needed to give him real meals - you know, meatloaf or tacos or lasagna, but I let that go rather quickly because he hardly ever eats my "hard-cooked meals" and I realized that he's just as content to eat a banana, some black beans, string cheese and peas.  He eats really odd combinations of food, but he seems to like it.

 

Last night, for example, he ate nearly a cup of cut up strawberries, some bread, corn and one bite of turkey burger. 

 

If I have made dinner and it's ready when it's time for Lukas to eat, I give him a little bit of what we are eating and try to convince him to try it.  This doesn't always work.  What typically does work for us is to "cheers" food with him (strange, but effective).  (Imagine clinking wine glasses in a toast, we toast with food and "then we eat" and yes, we say it aloud).

 

As far as recipes go, I keep it pretty simple if I am cooking something for Lukas.  Here are some meals I'll make for him:

 

• Quesadillas (cheese or chicken) with a side of black beans.
• English muffin pizzas - you can hide some veggies under the cheese!
• Grilled cheese with a side of grapes and peas.
• Rolled deli turkey, slices of cheese and bread with cut up fruit (and yes, one would think that is just a turkey and cheese sandwich, but my little guy likes his sandwich deconstructed, so I skip the step of actually constructing it).
• Mac n cheese made with pureed sweet butternut squash (see Jessica Seinfeld's book on sneaking veggies into your kids meals).
• Breakfast for dinner - scrambled eggs (can add pureed cauliflower) and cheese, with bacon and pancakes made with pureed sweet potatoes and a side of fruit.
• Spaghetti and meatballs - you can cut up veggies into the sauce.
• Don't underestimate a good ole PB&J.
• Cheese and spinach or meat tortellinis with tomato sauce.

 

I try to plan out our meals for the upcoming week every Sunday and then we do our grocery shopping as a family Sunday afternoons or evening.  That way we have food on hand in the house, which really can make or break any good intentions I have for eating in.  In the winter I'm a fan of the crock pot and I also keep a few prepared meals from Trader Joe's on hand in the freezer as a last resort.  Though we tend to go out to eat or pick up takeout before turning to the freezer.  I'd say we eat out 1-2 times per week because we just can't get our act together at the end of the work day.  Maybe sad, but true.

 

I hope this is helpful!  What do you feed your little ones for dinner?  Do you eat dinner as a family?

Therapy Has Been Good

I need to say a big thank you to my amazing readers, friends and family.  I didn't give y'all enough credit.  I thought I would be judged for admitting the truth about my struggles and for the course of action I'm taking to deal.  But I should've known that there would be no judgement.  The response to my last post was only that of love.  And understanding.

I was honestly shocked by the emails, texts and messages I received.  As it would turn out, I'm not alone in this.  Some of my friends who I have always thought had it "totally together" admitted to struggling with anxiety or depression, or both.  Others shared that they too were taking antidepressants.  And yet others shared the fact that they were in therapy and wished me well in my own.  This outpouring of support has been amazing.  So thank you to all of you who have shared your own honest, personal stories with me.  It means more than I can tell you.

I've had some insightful conversations over the past week that have truly helped me put things in perspective.   Some with friends.  Others with my fantastic therapist.  I realized that while I have always thought myself to be very open and honest on this blog, I tend to put a positive spin when writing about whatever it is I'm going through.  Perhaps without even realizing I was doing it.  I try to find the happy in everything.  I do believe happiness is a choice and most of the time I choose to be joyful and see the glass half full.  Or my writing portrays that.  I think in a way I've wanted to believe I could do it all with a smile on my face.  I wanted to hide the struggle and the questioning.  I wanted to give others hope that they could do it too.  I was putting pressure on myself to have it all together.  And that's just not what was going on.


The past few months have been a perfect storm of "too much" in my little life.  I stopped nursing Lukas, which alone was a highly emotional experience for me.  Mix in the change in hormones.  Add on extreme pressure at work, being at least 2 men down on our team for a few months, and my busiest month of billing in five years.  Throw in worry about my mom being sick (she's fine, we've thankfully just learned) and her and my dad going away on an extended trip.  A good mom-friend moved away.  All combined with feeling like I wasn't spending enough time with Lukas or my husband and never catching up on the laundry, the grocery shopping, phone calls with friends or partaking in my favorite hobby (writing).  The result was just an emotional meltdown.


I am thankful that the antidepressant worked so quickly.  I am thankful it was there to get me over the hump. I wish I hadn't waited so long to call my doctor to get the prescription.  I wish I had listened to my girlfriends when they urged me to call my OB.  Next time I will know not to wait so long.  Next time I won't allow myself to feel "defeated" for not being able to handle my mental health on my own.  Modern medicine is a gift and sometimes it is needed.  This time, in this instance, it was totally needed.


I'm starting to feel more like myself again.  I hope/think my post-weaning hormones are getting back to normal.  I no longer feel an immediate urgency to change something in my life.  My need to make a rash life shift has gone away.  Thankfully I didn't act on my swinging emotions without giving myself time to figure out what I really want.  I'm not sure what that is yet.  But I'm going to keep trying to figure it out.


In the meantime I'm going to give myself a break.  I'm going to take off all the pressure and just roll with life and see where we go.

The Post that Vanished

So, some of you may have seen the below post on Tuesday of this week.  It was up for a few hours and then was mysteriously taken down.  And by mysteriously taken down, I mean I removed it.  I posted it without thinking too much about the consequences and about the fact that I was doing the one thing I try not to do: announce/elude to something on the blog before I've told my family and close friends.  So I wanted to take down the post and at the very least,talk to my mom.  Turns out she saw the post in the two hours it was up.  And the post wasn't even news to her - as I should've known, even across the country in California, she's known something has been going on with me.  Then after I removed the post, something didn't feel right.  I felt like I was hiding by choosing to stop writing, and that's not what I'm about.   In the event that other women are going through something similar, I've decided to keep writing and to open up about what's going on.  But before that, the vanished post:

TTT: Know Your Limits

This post is framed as a tip so that I don't miss a Toddler Tips Tuesday post.  But it's more of an admission and an explanation.


The truth is that I am overextended right now. 


Everything feels like "too much" and something has got to give.  Right now, the thing to give is going to be this blog. 


I love writing and I love sharing my parenting journey with all of you, but lately it is feeling like yet another obligation and a burden. 


I try to be as genuine as possible on this blog and I haven't been totally forthcoming lately, so rather than continue to pretend everything is sunshine and rainbows, I'm going to stop writing publicly on the blog for a while.  The post-weaning depression did not go away on it's own.  It got worse.  So I'm sure that has something to do with my overwhelmed feelings of late.  But I'm not prepared to share that personal aspect of my life just yet. I'm dealing with it and I hope to talk about that at some point, just not right now.


I'm continuing again to struggle with the pulls of being a mom and wife and lawyer.  So for the time being, rather than put extra energy into keeping up this blog, I'm going to focus on my family and try to figure some things out.  And I think I need to sort these things out privately, rather than in a public venue, regardless of how few people read this blog.


So thank you for following over the past few years.  I plan on writing again and picking this blog back up, I'm just not sure when that will be.  It could be next week, or it could be in a year.  At this point, I'm not sure.

So, let me explain.  The biggest things has been the fact that the post-weaning depression was real and really did not go away.  Here's the post I wrote a few weeks ago, but chickened out rather than posting:

Weaning Depression: Full Disclosure

So I have been debating whether or not to write this post. My general rule is not to post anything on the blog that could cause a phone call from my mom or close friends asking me something along the lines of "why did I learn about this from your blog?". This post will cause those phone calls. If you're reading this and you don't know about this yet, I'm sorry. I just haven't been up for talking about it.



The sadness, despair and tears after weaning didn't stop. Four weeks later, they were still there. It all came to a head last week. I couldn't stop crying at work. As in, had the door shut all day and just sobbed at my desk. Nothing was wrong, yet I couldn't stop crying. Everything seemed horrible and amplified. I called Mr. Cob at one point and cried to him and said that I just couldn't do it anymore. Everything was too hard. Work was too much and I just felt like I was failing. He told me to call the doctor. I promised I would, but was lying. Luckily, my phone rang shortly thereafter. A woman I consider my mentor called me and asked how I was doing. I said fine and she said "you don't sound fine." And the flood gates opened. And I told her how I just felt like I was constantly on the verge of a panic attack. How I was sobbing for no reason. How it just felt like too much. And she said she understood and that she'd had similar issues after weaning. And she convinced me to hang up the phone and call my doctor. Like, right now. So I did. I called my OB and talked to the nurse and explained what was going on. She talked to the doctor and then called me back saying the doctor was calling me in a prescription for an anti-anxiety/anti-depressant. And she gave me the name of a few therapists.

So I filled the prescription and have been taking it for a week. I was more depressed and sad the first two days. Part of me felt completely defeated for not being able to deal with this on my own. A part of me worried what my family and friends would think. A part of me worried it wouldn't help.


Day 3 I woke up feeling better. I haven't cried uncontrollably for no reason. I haven't had the horrible anxiety. I haven't felt lost or sad. I finally am starting to feel like me again.


And tomorrow morning I go to see a therapist. As a wise woman recently told me, a little therapy is good for everyone.

I don't want to take medicine for a long time, but I was to the point of struggling to function at work and get through my day. So I'm glad I called the doctor. I'm trying not to feel embarrassed. But for some reason I am. Even writing this post, I question whether I'll actually post it for the world. Actually, it's not the world I'm concerned about. It's those I'm close to.


So for now, the truth is that I am taking an antidepressant and I'm seeing a therapist.  These are big, personal things that I have very mixed emotions about.  But if I'm going to keep writing this blog, then I must keep being honest and right now, Zoloft and therapy are my truth.  Thankfully, they are also working.  More on that soon....