Ready, get set,

mini vacation!

So this long weekend trip outta town really snuck up on me. I was cruising through the work week and didn't really give it much thought that Monday is a holiday.  

Now it's Friday night and the Bee is sleeping, dinner dishes are everywhere, and David and I are avoiding working and eating ice cream instead.  Not good.  I need to motivate with a capital M. 

Max is getting picked up for the kennel in 45 minutes. I need to start packing the 18,000 things that a toddler needs (I never knew a person so small could have so much stuff) and maybe some clothes for me as well. 

So I'm off, let's go, let's mini vacation!

A favorite ingredient: cornmeal

There is something so comforting about cornmeal.  I love it in everything, from simple polenta with butter to blue corn blueberry pancakes.  It's classic in quick breads, cornmeal loaf and cornmeal muffins.  You can mix it up with a spoon and a bowl--no fuss. 

I love eating my father-in-law's Texas style corn bread, served in thick sweet squares. Weirdly, I even like the grit-in-your-teeth texture.  

Cornmeal has a quality that makes it substantial and homey.   It evokes family dinners, picnics, and cool autumn nights.  You can add it to almost anything.  Jeanne Lemlin has a fantastic carmelized apple cake that calls for cornmeal in the batter.  Every time I make it for company my guests ask me, "What is the secret ingredient?"

We are going out of the city and into the mountains this weekend, where polenta is a traditional staple. Along with the fresh air and sunshine, I will be soaking up as much cornmeal as I can.

Guilty pleasure

Frozen peanut butter M&Ms. Because they're peanut butter and frozen and really, really, tasty that way.

Tempest in a tea pot

I have such a way of getting all stressed out and upset about things that are ridiculously far off in the future. The rational part of my brain is screaming at the emotional part to "Get a grip!" Despite my best efforts, around and around I go.

This generally starts to happen when I don't have enough to do at work. My job is structured so that I am very busy all morning, right up until lunch. After lunch is another story. It is a wasteland of staring at my computer screen and watching the minutes slowly pass by, trying desperately to find something useful to do.  That is when my mind starts wandering and I start thinking about preschool for Bee.

Why preschool?  I have no idea. I guess it is because Bee has a decent child care arrangement here.  She has a daily caregiver, a routine, friends in the park, and I am able to be home before 5:30 every day. Moving back to the US in a few years is the great unknown. I know where my job will be but I don't know where we will be living. I don't know whether I will have a job that will require me to work long hours.  I just don't know.  

I want Bee to have the kind of childhood that I had. I went to preschool.  My Mom worked part time. We had family outings to the pool, to museums, to story hour at the library. As a working mom, I feel like a failure in that regard. 

I want to be one of those moms driving an SUV, taking their baby to "Mommy and Me" yoga, with a planner full of play dates. I want to be busy being a Mom to my daughter.  On the other hand, I don't want to give up my career.  Life on one income, where we would live, with my husband's current job, would be, quite simply, impossible.  I am a working Mom.  I have my dream job that I worked so hard to obtain.  I fear that giving it up would make me bitter.

I try to straddle the middle line.  I work all day, but come home and try to make the most of my time with my daughter. We read books, we cook together, we play play-doh.  I am focused on her, (that is, unless I send her with her father to pick up a pizza because he came home too late to cook dinner.) I am certain that my Bee knows who her parents are. She puts her trust and love in us, and sees her caregiver as a good pal.  

I don't want Bee to be in an unimaginative day care, that stifles her creativity and intelligence. I know we'll work it out, in two years time. For me, though, the Great Unknown hides more dragons than butterflies.  

Family circle

Our evenings follow the same rhythm. After dinner David or I give Bee her bath (David on weekends, me on weeknights), dress her in her pjs, comb hair, brush teeth and read bedtime stories.  

For the evening story, we all sit together on the small couch in Bee's room and she picks out the story that she wants to read with minimal interference from us. One exception, "Going on a Bear Hunt" or "HUNT!" as Bee calls it, is strictly a day time only story. It's too exhausting to read after 7 pm. Some of her evening favorites are, "Big Red Barn," "Goodnight Gorilla," and "The Very Lonely Firefly."  We have a whole bedtime board book repertoire.  

Max has recently taken to joining us at story time.  He curls his furry self at our feet and listens intently.  I guess an almost two-year-old's bed time story is right on par with the understanding of an almost five year old Labrador retriever.  Or maybe he's just bored.

Regardless of Max's feelings on the matter, I will read a book, David will read a book, then we say prayers and its goodnight. ("Shhhhhhh! Go to sleep Bee!")

A few of my favorite things. . .

for parents and parents-to-be.  In my tenure as a mother, which is such a short time in the grand scheme of things, yet feels like forever to me, a number of items we have purchased or received stand out.  

In chronological order, they are:

Infant:

Quinny stroller, bassinet, and Maxi Cosi carseat combo.  The best 600 dollars I have ever spent on anything. Really.

Even nursing mamas need a break.  A breast pump--I still remember David trying to say this casually, while we both looked at each other and inwardly shuddered--is indispensable.  The Medela Pump in Style allowed me to nurse Bee until she was almost 18 months old, while working full time.  Even better, it allowed me to take a few hours and do something by myself when Bee was still a little Bean.

Ergo baby carrier.  It's 1,000 times better than the Baby Bjorn.  I can still use it with my almost two year old.

Bumbo seat.  Silly name, yet indispensable when you want to put baby down for a few minutes. Baby is sitting upright and can watch you.  

Toddler:

Bee walked a lot of miles in the apartment with her Haba walker.  It is well made, sturdy, and is destined to be a family heirloom.

Finally, a strange piece of furniture that has completely changed our family.  The Learning Tower allows Bee to help at the kitchen counter while we prepare meals.  No more crying and pulling on our legs to be picked up. She's part of the action while in her "tower" and while she's entertained, we can actually cook.  

A sweet indulgence

Weekend mornings are Starbucks mornings.  Last Sunday and this morning, David has been taking Bee and me to Starbucks.  

In the United  States, Starbucks can be found in every strip mall and airport in the country.  Here in the wilds of eastern Europe, there are only three (at least three that I know of) Starbucks in the entire country.  All are in shopping malls.  

A brief word about shopping malls in Eastern Europe, as I have been to quite a few:  They are varying degrees of smokiness and 1980s decor. Their stores are full of overpriced merchandise I would never want to buy, with few exceptions.  

However, there is one mall here, located on the outskirts of the city, that just opened its doors a few months ago.  It is clean, non-smoking, and blindingly new.  Their anchor store, right next to the entrance, is none other than a plushy Starbucks.  It's funny that I am waxing poetic about Starbucks when I actually don't drink coffee at all. It's more like a panacea. There is something comfortingly familiar about the chain that eases my homesickness while I am there.

David used to scorn Starbucks in the US, preferring crunchy independent coffee houses with sticky floors and bad poetry.  But then he started ordering Starbucks coffee while we were overseas, and realized that it wasn't half bad.  

While we were back in the US for language training, Starbucks was conveniently located on our commute home. It was fun to stop in and grab a drink, chai latte being my drug of choice, as it was the perfect amount of time for Bee's attention span in a public space: get in, get coffee, drink up, get out before a dirty diaper or meltdown occurs.

So, this morning Bee and I woke up at the leisurely hour of 6:45 am. David had already been running and walked the dog. I went for a run while David and Bee made whole wheat pancakes. I cleaned up and showered while David took Bee with him to the barbershop (and no they didn't cut my little dandelion's hair).  

By 10:00 am we were among the first shoppers at the mall--which is the only way to go. Late in the afternoon, city traffic is so excruciating that it takes a hour, literally a bumper-to-bumper horns blaring hour, to drive the five miles out of the city to the mall.  Any later and the mall parking lot is filled, there is a half an hour wait to even order coffee at the Starbucks (it's very popular), and the whole trip becomes a misery.  However, early in the morning it is relaxed. 

After sitting and drinking our coffee for a wonderful half hour, we walked through the mall and I discovered a Marks and Spencer store, newly opened, where I bought Bee some stretchy socks and two shirts.  

Our life, on the whole, is rather boring, but with a toddler, it is easier to take joy in something simple, like a latte, than struggle to continue to live the more adventurous pre-parenthood life.