Se Hace Camino Al Andar

When Alice was smaller, I had more time to read parenting books and pay attention to milestones, in terms of when they were “supposed to happen.” As she’s gotten older and more active, I have less time to pay attention to the timeline of milestones. All I cared was that she was hitting them. Crawling, walking, talking, throwing tantrums. Right on target! Lately, though, we have noticed that since turning 18 months, she is getting more into actual play and role-playing. She is no longer content to be a spectator but wants to be an active participant. She sits up on the kitchen counter while I cook and gets her hands into the salt, the flour, grabs the whisks and the spoons, sticks her fingers into the butter, wants to taste, taste, taste.

The fun is just beginning! She’s been playing more with her dolls, putting diapers on them, feeding them her food, independently “reading” her books. One of things on my wishlist for her is a play kitchen, and now that we’ve moved into a somewhat larger space, Henry and I agree that we can fit a small kitchen in here. I’m very excited about that! I know that she wants clothes for her dolls, so I’ll have to see what kind of magic I can work with the sewing machine or hit the consignment stores for doll clothes.

And today, we made playdough! We’ve moved past that crucial stage where everything has to go in her mouth, and into the stage where she is having fun with textures, mashing things up in her hands or otherwise just feeling them. Her books talk about rough and smooth, bumpy and shiny. The other day, I was making dumplings and when I was rolling out the dough for the dumpling skins, Alice demanded to be in on the action. I sat her at the table next to me, gave her a few pieces of dough and she went to town, making a nice mess with the flour.

A Nice Mess

Dumpling dough is not far off from playdough, and so, come Monday morning, we cooked up a batch of playdough. I used this playdough recipe, and in 30 minutes, we were set to go.

Fun with Playdough

I didn’t have the usual fancy playdough tools on hand, so we improvised with my fondant roller, some round biscuit cutters, a square block and some plasticware. We cut out shapes, made bracelets, snakes, smiley faces and acted out Patty Cake.  I felt good about my resourcefulness, something that comes in handy when it’s bitterly cold outside and the threat of cabin fever is forever looming.

I often mention that I would like to homeschool Alice, and I’m still on the fence about it but when I envision homeschooling, I think about mornings like this one and being able to provide a hands-on, tactile, manipulative play experience for Alice, using the things we have around the house. In these early years, learning is all about play and vice-versa. It’s deceptively simple but the implications for Alice’s future schooling and education reach far and wide.  It so happens that one of my twitter contacts posted a link today to an op-ed written by Susan Engel of Williams College about learning and play, in response to the upcoming proposed changes in the NCLB act.

Engel writes:

Research has shown unequivocally that children learn best when they are interested in the material or activity they are learning. Play — from building contraptions to enacting stories to inventing games — can allow children to satisfy their curiosity about the things that interest them in their own way. It can also help them acquire higher-order thinking skills, like generating testable hypotheses, imagining situations from someone else’s perspective and thinking of alternate solutions.

Good early childhood education is an increasing rarity and though I’ve been a staunch supporter of the public school system in the past, my brief years in the classroom have shown me the public schools are coming up short, time and time again– either through their own fault or at the hands of ill-fated policy. I’ve been seeking out independent schools for Alice because in that independent environment, early childhood education is still largely sacred and revered. To be sure, the option is not inexpensive but it would be more costly to trust my child’s educational fate to misguided policy, overcrowded classrooms and stifled creativity in the name of test scores. It’s not a sacrifice I’m willing to make. Or rather, it’s an economic sacrifice that I am willing to make.

Hello from Greenfield, MA! There’s not much that’s green here at the moment, since it’s the dead of winter but the snow can be quite pretty, so there’s that.

As I type, Alice is sitting next to me at the table spooning up yogurt and granola all by herself without making too much of a mess. It’s a relatively new development related to the fact that we now have a kitchen table, generously donated by my mother who got a new one and passed along the old one. It’s a small thing but with this kitchen table, I can take the tray off Alice’s high chair and push her right up to the table. It seems to have solved the pesky highchair boycott she’s had going for awhile, both at home and at restaurants. (The solution at a restaurant was fairly obvious–booster seat, of course!)

Some other things are new, too. We are slowly but surely weeding out our collection of “stuff.” Living in an open plan loft demands careful editing and creative solutions as far as storage goes. We still have some things in boxes and bags, and I have a feeling that the longer the stuff sits in boxes and bags, the more I’ll discover what I and we can live without. In What Could You Live Without, Kristof shares the story of the Salwen family, who downsized their home and trimmed their lifestyle considerably, in the name of helping others in need. A noble act, to be sure but the big take-away from that story is the idea that we could and should live with less, that we need to somehow counteract this pattern, as Americans, that we’ve fallen into of collecting more and more stuff, lest we begin to drown or perhaps, we have already begun to drown, as evidenced by the environmental disaster we’ve found ourselves in. If you haven’t watched The Story of Stuff yet, I highly recommend it! Okay, enough of that.

One of the challenges we are facing is Henry’s new work situation. In his new position, he works from home full-time. This is new for us. He’s worked from home a few days here and there in his old job but doing it full-time is a whole different ballgame. We are working to strike  a balance between the space Henry needs to get his work done and the attention that Alice wants from her daddy. She’s not used to him being around ALL. THE. TIME. and it’s been a real treat for her. Hopefully, the novelty will soon wear off and we’ll get settled into a routine that works for all of us. For my part, I’ve been seeking out activities that can take Alice and I out of the house even on the coldest of days. This week, we visited the local library so that I could get a library card and checked out the childrens’ reading room. Today, we’re going back to check out a story time. A friend that we met at the library earlier this week mentioned a playtime at the local Y, which is very close to our new apartment, so we’ll be going to check out what they have to offer. I would love to sign Alice up for swimming lessons but with a new baby on the way, it might not be feasible right now.

Oh, yeah. Baby news. We’re now in the third trimester, with about ten weeks to go. I had an appointment yesterday with the new practice and met one of the nurse-midwives. So far, so good–the baby is head down, so let’s hope he/she stays that way. I really liked her a lot and was encouraged by their support of VBACs. Baystate Franklin Medical is a small, almost rural hospital but it has gotten excellent reviews on the Mothering.com community forums for being a great place to have a natural birth. The midwife explained that a few things are done differently for mothers having a VBAC but otherwise, I’ll be free to birth as I choose. For example, VBAC mothers have their heart rate monitored continuously but instead of being strapped into bed with the monitor, the hospital uses a telemetry strap so that mothers can remain mobile. This is genius. Why doesn’t everyone do this?! Even though it’s such a small hospital, their use of technology is way better than anything I saw at Roosevelt or NYU. During my appointment yesterday, the nurse was using a PC  tablet to take down my vitals and medical history, so everything is on the computer and can be shared across the hospital system. I was impressed and I’m looking forward to giving birth at Baystate!

I’m blogging about our Greenfield adventures over at The Grass is Greener, so please go by and take a look!

Why is my belly bigger and didn’t I just pee? and why can’t I sleep through the night? and why the hell am I so tired? And why can’t I put my socks and shoes on? And mmh, I could totally polish off this pint of ice cream rightthisverysecond. And I’m so thirsty! And so hot. Who turned up the heat in here? Someone open a window before I suffocate.

Yes, 12 weeks to go and I still have those moments of “oh, yeah. I’m pregnant again.” I swear, I have no idea how this happened!

I also still haven’t wrapped my head around the fact that we are moving in a week. A WEEK. Guess how much packing I’ve gotten done? 11 boxes. Crap still looms large. It’s very tempting to just chuck everything or freecycle it all! We already dumped a lot of stuff. Even though the space we are moving into is bigger, it is also open, which demands less stuff since it can’t all be stashed away into various dark corners. It’s just as well… I miss those days when packing meant throwing all my books into boxes and my clothes into suitcases and I could call it a day. Now, we have… I don’t even know what. Camping gear, for starters. I have many more kitchen appliances than I once did. Also, baby and toddler crap.  It’s unavoidable but I bet I can find more stuff to throw out!

Thanks to the ‘10 Bloggies, I’m addicted to more blogs. Here are two that I’m crushing on right now:

Booklicious

Confessions of a Young Married Couple

As my Facebook and Twitter contacts might’ve surmised, Henry and I are packing up and moving on! It seems like we’ve been scheming and dreaming about moving to Western MA since we first met and bonded over our common love for Northampton, our shared desire for a quieter, more simpler life.

There’s nothing like having one kid, then another to bring your dreams, your priorities, your desires into sharp focus. Instead of a hazy mirage somewhere in the distance, all that you strive for takes on urgency and you starting finding ways to make it all happen. And I’m happy to say, we’ve finally made it happen. We’re taking that first step and moving to Western MA in two weeks, thanks to a great job opportunity for Henry. We have yet to sell our apartment but we are eager to move and the company is eager to have him close by, so we’re in the midst of packing and purging and cleaning. We’ve signed a lease, handed over our first, last and security. We’re a little nervous about balancing all our finances until the apartment sells but we’re determined to see each other through and stick it out. This is just one stop on our way to the clear vision we see at the end– land, a farmhouse, children chasing chickens around.

We are so excited. We’re leaving a lot behind–our friends, our family, financial security but we have faith that though we’ll be poorer in some ways, we’ll be rich in happiness.

Some other things:

• Today marks the beginning of my third trimester. April looms ever closer!
• I’ve registered to take the MTEL, the Massachusetts licensing exam for teachers. I plan to re-enter the classroom sometime in late 2010, early 2011. Wish me luck!
• If you know anyone in the market for a lovely, little apartment in a lovely, little building in a quiet neighborhood, do let me know!

When my mom made Rice-A-Roni for dinner, it was a good night. If I didn’t have so many siblings, I would’ve easily polished off the entire thing myself. What to do, then, when you’re an adult and you’ve sworn off most processed foods, especially something like Rice-A-Roni, which probably contains more sodium than any one human should ingest in a single sitting?

Make your own, of course. If you google homemade Rice-A-Roni recipes, you’ll get a lot of hits. I didn’t realize that Rice-A-Roni actually has pasta in it. All I remember is the yummy chicken-y taste and the perfectly cooked rice.  Also, when looking at the recipes, I realized that I had basically made homemade Rice-a-Roni before, in the form of Giada De Laurientiis’ Nonna Luna rice. Nice try, Giada!

These days, I’m not in the mood for fancy, doctored-up Rice-A-Roni a la Giada. When I’m pregnant, I find myself going back to good old suburban comfort food of my childhood and tonight was no exception.  It was nothing exciting or fancy but oh so good, oh so comforting and oh so… cheap! Call me a recessionista!

Chicken-y Rice with Almond-Honey Chicken Tenders

Rice:

1 cup of white rice

Scant 2 cups of chicken broth

1 chicken boullion cube or one packet of chicken boullion powder (I use Goya).

2 tablespoons butter

In a saucepan or skillet, melt butter, then add rice and boullion. Cook until rice is toasted and coated in butter and boullion. Add chicken broth, bring to a boil, cover and lower to a simmer. Simmer for 15-20 minutes, until most of the liquid is absorbed. At this point, you can either transfer the rice to a pan or if your skillet is oven-proof, leave the rice in the skillet.

Chicken:

A package of chicken tenders

Breadcrumbs

Ground almonds (I ground them in my food processor. You want them pretty fine but not powdery)

Egg

Milk (or cream or half&half)

2 or 3 tablespoons Honey

Flour

3  small pans or wide, shallow bowls

Vegetable oil

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a skillet, heat vegetable oil, enough to cover bottom of pan.

3. In one bowl, combine bread crumbs and ground almonds. In another, beat together the egg, milk and honey. In the third bowl, add a 1/2 cup or so of flour.

4. Dredge each chicken tender first in flour, then dip in egg, then dredge in breadcrumb mixture.

5. Add chicken tenders to hot skillet, 3 or 4 at a time. Pan-fry until coating is brown and crisp, and chicken is almost cooked through.

6. Transfer chicken to pan or skillet with rice, placing the chicken on top of the rice.

7. Cover with foil and cook in the oven for 20 minutes.

Serve it up and enjoy. As my husband said, “I could eat like this three times a week and be a happy man.”

I really like NY Teacher’s newest post in which she outlines the past decade of her life. My memory is notoriously bad but I’m going to give it a shot and see how it all lays out!

2000: The second semester of my junior year at NYU School of Ed finds me studying in Prague, where I take classes towards my minor, Metropolitan Studies. The program is so cheap that my financial aid covers all the tuition, plus three weekend trips (to Vienna, Bratislava, Berlin and Budapest.) I also go to Amsterdam to visit my friend Neri, who I know from Brooklyn. I have many adventures, including navigating the Czech infrastructure, skiing on the Czech-German border and hitchhiking for the first and only time. I meet my good friends, Sue and Anna Bain, who were in the same program. We’re still great friends to this day!

2001: Senior year at NYU. I live in a dorm on 7th street and I start student teaching at Murray Bergtaum HS, where I have a great cooperating teacher named Wayne, who is now the head of the English Dept there. I also meet my friend Sandy there, another English teacher, and a internet geek like me!  I graduate in May, find myself homeless and crash on my friend Emily’s floor in Bushwick for two months while I work for Jumpstart, Inc and look for my own apartment. I end up in a two bedroom in Ditmas Park (by coincidence, this is the same building my older sister lived in a few years prior!), with my younger sister, who is still an undergrad at The New School. The summer ends, I still don’t have a teaching job but I am tutoring for Kaplan and  substitute teaching in the South Bronx.

When 9/11 happens, I’m unemployed and home that day. Our TV sucks, and we have no clue what’s going on until my mother calls around 9:30, frantic. We turn on our TV and get a unclear picture of what’s going on downtown. Later that day, I go up to the elevated F train platform, where I can see the mushroom cloud of smoke from the burning towers. It’s surreal and I can’t wrap my head around it.

Thanks to some friend connections, I finally get a full-time teaching job right before Thanksgiving, at a high school in the South Bronx. I get off to a rocky start but it’s not so bad. I’m told by my new students the last teacher left because a student stabbed her hand with a pencil, but I’m assured that it’ll never happen to me because I’m “not a bitch like that teacher.” I guess I feel relieved? It takes a long time to get paid, and I have get an emergency check cut by the school so that I can go home for the holidays.

2002: I begin the second half of my first teaching year. It’s kind of a blur but I make it to June, and look forward to starting again in September, a bit wiser and more confident. That summer, I go to Puerto Rico for two weeks for a UFT teaching workshop at the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras. We cram 6 credits worth of classes into those two weeks, and take a trip to Ponce. I meet my friend Linda at this program, who is from PR and gives me some lessons on what life is like for Puerto Ricans. My Spanish still sucks.  (For the life of me, I can’t remember what year I did this!)

I think this is also the summer that I start working for Oasis Children’s Services, a summer camp that provides summer enrichment for kids in the inner city. I meet my friend Yelena, who will be the maid of honor at my wedding 5 years later.

I return to my school that Fall, ready for my second year of teaching. In some ways, it’s easier and in other ways, it’s harder. The professional growth is never-ending and goes in many directions. I start grad school that Fall, too, studying Urban Policy Analysis at Milano Graduate School of Urban Policy Analysis and Management, at The New School.

I think I also went to Mexico with my friends Yelena and Jill this year. I get my first tattoo. Now, I think it’s stupid. Oh well!

2003: I finish up my second year of teaching, and survive. I think I go back to work for Oasis that summer? My memory is blurry on this. I start my third year of teaching that September, and continue working on my Master’s degree at night. I’m exhausted.

2004: I finish my third year of teaching, and go to Ecuador that summer with my friend Sue, her friend Gorman and his friend Holcomb. The four of us travel around, renting a truck and hitting the beach. I turn 24 while we’re there, get crazy drunk on my birthday, puke and pass out. Good times.  Holcomb and Sue hook up on this trip, and 5 years later, they get married!

I start my 4th year of teaching, and my second-to-last semester of grad school. I make the mistake of taking three classes instead of two, and nearly end up on academic probation. I’m doing things half-assed, trying to balance school and work. It sucks.

I also move from Brooklyn to Forest Hills in Queens, to live with my now-ex-boyfriend. I like living in a grown-up building with a doorman and everything.  I learn a lot about myself from living with my boyfriend. It’s painful at times.

This is also the year I discover Flickr, which will prove to be a major turning point, believe it or not.

I start my professional relationship with the New York City Writing Project.

2005: I finish up my 4th year of teaching, I take a trip to Jamaica for a week with Yelena and Jill, and I go to California to visit my teacher-blogger friend, Tamara and she informs me that my boyfriend is an asshole, which I think I already knew, deep down inside.  While in California,  I tell my boyfriend that when the lease is up, I want to move out, and probably break up.  I’d move out sooner but it’s the middle of the school year, and also, I don’t have much money (mostly because said boyfriend is a horrible mooch.)

By the end of the summer, I find an apartment in Spanish Harlem with two other girls. My sisters help me move out, and I officially break up with my boyfriend, though it takes a few tries to really separate ourselves.

I start my 5th year of teaching with a sweet commute of only 15 minutes to my school, much improved over the hour, hour and a half it used to take when I lived in Brooklyn and Queens. I try my hand at dating, get bored with it and give up.

I finish grad school in May, finally.

I start chatting with a Flickr contact, one thing leads to another, we meet in person and by  New Year’s, we’re attached at the hip.

2006: It’s an amazing year. I’m finally hitting my stride as a teacher, I have an amazing new love and I buy my first apartment.

That summer, we go to Seattle for two weeks, to hike the Wonderland Trail with his friends. My sister says if we survive this trip together, we can survive anything. In August, when we come back, we get engaged and start planning a Fall wedding for the following year.

2007: The year is a flurry of wedding planning, and teaching and Henry moving into my apartment. I have the opportunity to go to Paris with Yelena and Jill. The trip is the week before Spring Break, but I go anyway, and basically have a two week vacation in March that includes a weekend in Iceland. Very few people at work know that I’ve done this and I keep it hush-hush. It’s totally worth it!

That summer, I co-facilitate a tech workshop for teachers, with NYCWP.

We get married in October, and take a two week honeymoon in Italy. A friend has gifted us the use of her villa in Umbria, so after a few days in Rome, we rent a car and head out. We enjoy the solitude and peacefulness of the Umbrian hills, with some day trips, including a trip to Florence.

We come home to discover that we’ve given each other the best wedding gift ever– a honeymoon baby!

2008: Towards the end of my first trimester, I’m finding myself increasingly stressed out by my teaching situation. The administration at the school sucks, I’m losing my energy and feeling burned out. I want to leave and Henry okays it. With his support, I resign. I continue working as a tech consultant for NYCWP, and deliver a workshop or two.

July comes and brings with it our newest family member. Our lives are forever changed. We also start thinking about moving to Western MA.

2009: I settle into life as a SAHM, with some reservations. Alice turns a year old, hits all her milestones in due time and Henry grows increasingly dissatisfied with living in NYC and so do I. He starts looking towards Western MA.

In March, we take Alice to Austin to visit friends and attend SXSW. In June, Alice takes her first international trip, to Krakow for Sue and Holcomb’s long-awaited wedding. In September, we find out that I’m pregnant again, much to our shock and delight. In October, we celebrate our 2nd anniversary with a trip to Seattle and Vancouver to visit friends.

When we return home, Henry begins in earnest to look for a job in Western MA. As the year comes to a close, we heave a sigh of relief when he gets a job offer and we begin to plan our move for early 2010. Huzzah!

People, it has been a hell of a decade and I continued to be amazed by how much can change in such a short amount of time. Here’s to a healthy, happy new year full of adventures and dreams.

Technorati Tags: decade in review

We eat bagels every Sunday morning, so it’s only natural that “bagel” or “bay-go” would be in Alice’s vocabulary. This past Sunday, I somehow got the notion that I should make my own bagels. It might have something to do with our impending move out of New York City, and the state altogether to a place that is not known to have the real deal bagels.
An internet search turns up a great many recipes for bagels, and two of the food blogs that I read also share bagel recipes (Nosh With Me and Baking and Books). The first recipe I tried, on Sunday morning, I selected because the bagels could be made in a short time. The other recipes called for the sponge method, to be done the night before. I followed the recipe to the letter, more or less. They came out pretty good, but I wanted to try another recipe, so taking what I learned from the first recipe, I adapted the recipe from Baking and Books. This second round of bagels was better than the first, according to my sister and my husband.
Someone suggested looking at Bittman’s recipe, an idea that didn’t occur to me before I made these two batches, but no matter– one look at Bittman’s recipe, and I knew it wasn’t for me. His recipe takes 3-4 hours to create, and as usual, too meticulous for my freewheeling kitchen ways!

Bagels (Adapted from various recipes)

Makes 12 Bagels

4-6 cups of AP flour
1 tsp of Active Dry Yeast
2 C of warm water
3 Tbl of sugar
1 Tbl of vegetable oil

1. In a large bowl, combine the yeast and water. Let it sit until the yeast is dissolved and foamy, about 5-10 minutes.
2. Add the remaining ingredients and stir until combined. Dough will be shaggy and thick, and somewhat moist. Add a little more warm water if you’re having trouble getting all the flour incorporated.
3. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for 8-10 minutes, until dough is smooth and stretchy.
4. Divide dough into 12 roughly equal pieces. I used a  scale to get the weight of each piece about the same. Roll each piece into a ball. Spread a little veggie oil on your hands, and roll each ball once more to coat with oil (to prevent sticking during rising). Leave dough balls on kneading surface and cover with saran wrap. Let dough rise for an hour. You can test readiness by poking the dough with your fingertip. If the impression remains, your dough is ready!
5. Now, it’s time to form the bagels themselves. Roll each ball into a rope with your palms until the rope is  long enough to wrap around your hand, with overlap between the ends. You want the overlapped ends to be on your palm side. Using your palm, roll the rope across the counter to fuse the two ends together.
6. Place the bagels on an oiled baking sheet (or use parchment/silpat), cover with saran wrap and let the dough rest for 10 minutes, or until puffy.
7. In the meantime, pre-heat the oven to 425 degrees, and bring a large pot of water to boil. (Some people like to add baking soda to the water to aid in the browning of the dough but I found that this made my bagels too pretzel-like.)
8. When the rested dough is ready, boil the bagels two or three at a time, to avoid crowding the pot. Boil on one side for a minute, then flip them over and boil the other side. Do this with a slotted spoon or  a spider.
9. Let the bagels dry on on a towel before placing them back on the baking sheet. You can also, at this point, add your flavorings (sesame seed, garlic, onion, etc). Do this while the bagels are wet.
10. When all the bagels have been boiled, place them into the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes on each side.
11. Let the bagels cool for at least ten minutes before cutting into them and putting a schmear on!

Technorati Tags: bagels

I get girl crushes from time to time but do you ever get blog crushes? There are a few blogs I’ve been obsessed with lately, because they are beautifully written portraits of lifestyles that take the chaos and the craziness of life, and make them just plain romantic, with great pictures to boot.

Soulemama
Cup of Jo
Dear Baby
Marvelous Kiddo

What are your favorite blogs to read right now?

It’s 5 am, or it was 5 am when I woke up, thanks to the stupid cat. I’m really ready to kick him out the window.

No NaNoWriMo winner badge for me! C’est La Vie! I’m not too torn up about it because like I said, I think I have a workable short story on my hands.  I’ll be submitting for feedback at some point at the iAnthology, the NWP ning set up by Kevin Hodgson from the Western Massachusetts Writing Project.

In other news, I’m starting doula training this month! I’m super excited about this even though I have lots of work to do in the next few years. I’m attending my first workshop on the 13th, in the city, and I’ve arranged to observe my own doula’s childbirth classes, to fulfill that requirement. The certification process involves a lot of reading, observation, attending a 16 hour workshop, attending births, taking a lactation/breastfeeding course and writing essays.

And yes, I’m still pursuing copyediting training in the meantime. The self-paced online course has been slow going for me, mostly because I’m not making the time. I finally realized that I need to treat it like an actual class that I’m taking, a night class, if you will. So, starting tonight, I’ll be escaping the house after dinner to do my coursework.

Our apartment is on the market, finally, but we still have lots of work to do before the place is presentable enough to take pictures for the listing. We tore up the lineoleum in the bedroom only to discover there was only plywood underneath, not hardwood like we expected/hoped. So, we’re in search of a carpet remnant (the room is only 10×9!). Once that gets installed, we can stage the bedroom, and get started on clearing out the rest of the apartment. A lot of it will go into storage, some of it will get thrown out or given away.  We’re not in any particular hurry to move but we know that the longer our apartment sits on the market, the more stale our listing will get. We have a six month contract with the broker, so we’ll see how it goes.

Winter is coming, my belly is getting bigger by the day, and I’m excited for the holidays but also for what the new year will bring. I have an anatomy scan later today but we aren’t finding out the sex this time around, so they’ll just do the usual nuchal fold check and the other measurements, nothing too exciting.  In a lot of ways, this pregnancy feels like old hat, but it’s different in that I’m chasing around a toddler. It’s getting harder and harder to carry Alice on my hip, and the littlest things wipe out my energy, like changing a diaper! (She very rarely lies still for her diaper to be changed… it takes some strength and cajoling to get the job done.)

On our way home from Albany this past Thanksgiving weekend, we stopped to visit friends who have a farm about 20 minutes outside of Albany. It’s a small farm, similar to what we have in mind for our own farm one day, so it was good for us to see it! They have tons of chickens, some goats and some pigs. I think we’ve decided to stick with goats and chickens, and growing produce because the whole pig thing seems too messy and quite frankly, in my pregnant state, the stench of the pigsty made me more than a little queasy.  We bought bagels with us, and had a nice lunch before hitting the road again. Our friends didn’t let us leave empty-handed! We came home with eggs fresh from the coop, a lamb shoulder, ground buffalo meat and a pork loin. Our freezer is happy, and soon our bellies will be, too!

So, after my whining yesterday, I finally shut up and managed to write a few words. Sadly, I’ve yet to break 5000, much less 10000 or 15000 as most participants have by now. I’m using a trial version of Ulysses software, which has a nifty full screen feature that blocks out everything on your desktop. It works pretty well, unless you forget to take your IM client offline. I was interrupted yesterday by an IM and from there, other interruptions popped up. But I’m glad I got more writing in.
I feel like my story is starting to go somewhere and my characters are shaping up. I’m working on incorporating the internal monologue sections I wrote the first week into the actual plot, so technically I have more than 2092 words written but I won’t count those until they become part of the story.
Whether or not I reach 50K words, I do feel that I have something that could be workshopped into a decent short story, and that makes me feel good!

Technorati Tags: NaNoWriMo