Home sick today (yes really). Which is frustrating because a) its a totally beautiful day, and b) I miss my baby, but its better that he's at Sarah's because I'm too sick to take care of him properly.
A few random thoughts:
On E sleeping through the entire night in his crib last night:
+ Positive: I didn't have to spend the entire night stuck in the same position (on my right side with my right arm above my head) so my shoulder didn't hurt when I woke up this morning.
- Negative: I woke up with a start about 5 am thinking at first that I'd pushed the baby out of bed, then after a moment's thought realized that he was still in his crib and clearly he must be dead.
On E and "self-directed" feeding:
+ Positive: He likes to try lots of foods, and eats lots of yummy things.
- Negative: There is a ton of waste. Last night he methodically picked up each and every noodle and dropped them on the floor around his high-chair, clearly aiming them for the most artistic patterns. (We probably put out six times as much food as he'll actually eat, knowing that he'll only get 1/6th into his mouth - thus the other 5/6ths (which mostly lands on the floor. Or in his chair. Or down his shirt. Or in his hair.) is waste, which drives me crazy.)
On plastics:
I'd like to try to start living my life buying fewer plastics, but a simple visit to the grocery store yesterday showed me that wasn't possible. Like, I wouldn't be able to buy most food (yes, we have a farmer's market in our town, but its one day a week in the afternoon and taking a couple hours from work just to go grocery shopping isn't going to cut it - and, anyway, there are no meats for sale there). Plus, can you even find an infant car seat not made from plastic?
If anyone has fairly easy suggestions for getting plastics out of our lives, I'm open to them.
On Winkflash:
On June 11th I ordered 40 custom invitations from Winkflash for E's birthday party (which is Sunday, July 8th by the way). They shipped on the 13th via USPS Priority Mail. Today is the 21st and still no invites. The young lady I spoke with at their customer service center today said that they can't consider it overdue until its been "10 business days" so if I don't have them by Monday the 25th they'll reship. Feh. Monday the 25th barely gives me time to get them out in a timely fashion. I reordered from Zazzle today, using 2 day shipping. I doubt the Winkflash order is ever going to get here, and they don't seem to care.
Note that they said they sent them Priority Mail. "Do you have a tracking number" I asked them. "No," Valley Girl CS replied, "you can't track things through the Post Office." "Oh really?" I replied, "that's funny, I spend the extra sixty-five cents to track Priority Mail packages all the time. Too bad you don't care enough about your customers to offer that service." I'm a total bitch when it comes to unhelpful customer service, I am.
A favorite customer service related quote that I found on the web today: "The wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire."
On cooking:
Because I want E to eat better than his father and I do, I'm having to learn how to cook again. (Yes I know that many of you think of me (in an SCA context) as being able to cook. The truth is that I'm a lousy cook. Left on my own I would live on white rice and plain pasta and things out of cans. So I've started reading books and watching cooking shows to try and figure out a) new things to cook, and b) how the heck you make them.) Last night I boiled some long stir-fry-type noodles in organic veggie garlic broth and then steamed some frozen mixed veggies to go with them. Can anyone recommend an easy way to get the steamed veggies out of the steamer (the metal kind of steamer that sits in a saucepan with a little boiling water underneath) without burning yourself? I ended up picking up the steamer by inserting the tine of a fork in the tiny ring at the top, but the steamer was unsteady and I was afraid I was going to dump everything on the floor.
That's all from here at the moment. Back to sleep now.....
A few random thoughts:
On E sleeping through the entire night in his crib last night:
+ Positive: I didn't have to spend the entire night stuck in the same position (on my right side with my right arm above my head) so my shoulder didn't hurt when I woke up this morning.
- Negative: I woke up with a start about 5 am thinking at first that I'd pushed the baby out of bed, then after a moment's thought realized that he was still in his crib and clearly he must be dead.
On E and "self-directed" feeding:
+ Positive: He likes to try lots of foods, and eats lots of yummy things.
- Negative: There is a ton of waste. Last night he methodically picked up each and every noodle and dropped them on the floor around his high-chair, clearly aiming them for the most artistic patterns. (We probably put out six times as much food as he'll actually eat, knowing that he'll only get 1/6th into his mouth - thus the other 5/6ths (which mostly lands on the floor. Or in his chair. Or down his shirt. Or in his hair.) is waste, which drives me crazy.)
On plastics:
I'd like to try to start living my life buying fewer plastics, but a simple visit to the grocery store yesterday showed me that wasn't possible. Like, I wouldn't be able to buy most food (yes, we have a farmer's market in our town, but its one day a week in the afternoon and taking a couple hours from work just to go grocery shopping isn't going to cut it - and, anyway, there are no meats for sale there). Plus, can you even find an infant car seat not made from plastic?
If anyone has fairly easy suggestions for getting plastics out of our lives, I'm open to them.
On Winkflash:
On June 11th I ordered 40 custom invitations from Winkflash for E's birthday party (which is Sunday, July 8th by the way). They shipped on the 13th via USPS Priority Mail. Today is the 21st and still no invites. The young lady I spoke with at their customer service center today said that they can't consider it overdue until its been "10 business days" so if I don't have them by Monday the 25th they'll reship. Feh. Monday the 25th barely gives me time to get them out in a timely fashion. I reordered from Zazzle today, using 2 day shipping. I doubt the Winkflash order is ever going to get here, and they don't seem to care.
Note that they said they sent them Priority Mail. "Do you have a tracking number" I asked them. "No," Valley Girl CS replied, "you can't track things through the Post Office." "Oh really?" I replied, "that's funny, I spend the extra sixty-five cents to track Priority Mail packages all the time. Too bad you don't care enough about your customers to offer that service." I'm a total bitch when it comes to unhelpful customer service, I am.
A favorite customer service related quote that I found on the web today: "The wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire."
On cooking:
Because I want E to eat better than his father and I do, I'm having to learn how to cook again. (Yes I know that many of you think of me (in an SCA context) as being able to cook. The truth is that I'm a lousy cook. Left on my own I would live on white rice and plain pasta and things out of cans. So I've started reading books and watching cooking shows to try and figure out a) new things to cook, and b) how the heck you make them.) Last night I boiled some long stir-fry-type noodles in organic veggie garlic broth and then steamed some frozen mixed veggies to go with them. Can anyone recommend an easy way to get the steamed veggies out of the steamer (the metal kind of steamer that sits in a saucepan with a little boiling water underneath) without burning yourself? I ended up picking up the steamer by inserting the tine of a fork in the tiny ring at the top, but the steamer was unsteady and I was afraid I was going to dump everything on the floor.
That's all from here at the moment. Back to sleep now.....