Fun things to do!

Side note: breastfeeding is a wonderful experience for both mom and baby. I highly recommend it. HOWEVER! Breastfeeding should come with a warning sign or some other bright yellow caution page inside the instruction manual. Oh wait there is no instruction manual. They just hand you a crying baby in the hospital and you're naturally supposed to know what to do. When it's not going so naturally and lovely and the angels are not singing and rejoicing as you nurse your lovely little bundle of joy, the nurse just may come over and grab your breast and proceed to shove it in the baby's mouth. The shove is completely void of any care or worry for fragility. Back to the point.....the warning. WARNING ALL BREASTFEEDING MOMS: When you stop breastfeeding, your body no longer burns 500+ calories a day all by itself. You must stop eating as you've eaten during your pregnancy and breastfeeding days. It cannot continue. If you choose to ignore this warning, you will join me and all the other post breastfeeding moms in our agony. The agony of standing in your closet daily, gazing at all the pants that are one to two sizes smaller than what you can actually wear, is real. Oh yes you did wear them at some point during your breastfeeding days, but those days are gone and so is your size 4 waist. Head this warning! And if anyone needs some size 6 pants let me know.


Back to fun things to do: Buttonwood Park Zoo is hosting the Easter Bunny this weekend!! FUN! Advance reservations required. The weather should be perfect so go have some fun at the zoo. http://bpzoo.org/things-to-do/easter-bunny-at-the-zoo/

The weekend is over and I am sad.  I love weekends.  I feel like Monday through Thursday is just a race to get to Friday.  We hope the time passes quickly during the week and want everything to slow down once Friday arrives.  Why is this?  Doesn't every day of the week deserve the same respect and value that we give Friday, Saturday and Sunday?  I wish I had the same peaceful feeling on a Monday that I have on a Saturday afternoon.  I'm hesitant to blame all of this on work because I think moms and dads that stay at home have the same thoughts.  But I could be wrong. 

The attached video could explain why Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday get a bad wrap.  Honestly, for those who do what they love eveyday of the week....I'm jealous and envious.  Until I figure out how to do that.....Saturday, I love you with all my heart.  You really are the most special day of the week.  Sunday you are a close second.  You would hold first place if you didn't constantly remind us that Monday would follow you ever time you came around. 

Here's what I love and how we spent our Saturday.

Nobre skiing the big kid runs!

back in time...

I was going through pictures on my computer and found the sweetest shots of my little one.  He's only 6 months old in these pics.  They are so sweet at this age!  I wish I could go back but he's so much fun now, at 2.  Watching the small ones grow... you can't hold on and you want to go forward and they're so darn cute along the way! 

Fun things to do in New England

Once a month the Providence Children's Museum is open Friday Nights. If you're like me, gone are the days of doing anything adult related on a Friday evening. But that doesn't mean you have to stay home, cook dinner and go through the mundane Monday to Thursday ritual. Go have some fun! Pack a picnic and head to the Children's Museum! PS...admission is free!

And if you're wondering where on earth you'll have a picnic....they have a room upstairs with tables and chairs. Perfect for dinner at the museum! And really the only other option is hitting a drive through on your way. My kid won't eat chicken nuggets, go figure. And I don't really like giving him that food anyway. See the post on Food Inc. if you're curious as to why.

The next free Friday is April 16th. The hours are 5 PM to 8 PM.

Another post...not quite a year later

Yes it's almost been a year since my last post which was only the second post of this blog but who's counting? Again not sure why I'm posting but my dear friend Alli is making me do it. She literally said she'd stab me if I didn't. Ok so maybe she didn't say she would stab me but she has said that before so it is something she might say.

I watched Food Inc. last night. If you haven't seen it yet you must run to your computer and order it from Amazon or rent it from NetFlix. Wait, you're already at your computer if you're reading this. So as soon as you're done reading this post, click here and order the movie! Show it to all your friends and make your kids watch it. It is a must see!!! I'm a huge fan of one of the contributors to the movie, Michael Pollan. I first learned of his writings in an MBA class, Corporate and Social Responsibility. Hold on now, don't go to sleep, I'm not going to bore you with school talk. But seriously, if you read any of his writings it will make you think about what you are buying in the grocery store and feeding your family. I was in complete shock when I first read his PBS article on feed lot beef. Yikes! Scary stuff. Before reading the article, I didn't really think about where the meat we purchase originates. You go to the grocery store and buy it. That was the extent of it, other than what's on sale this week. The problem with this thinking is that it's widespread and because we don't think about where our meat comes from, we lose the control to have a voice in what we eat. If we decide that we aren't going to buy the feed lot beef and we want grass fed beef, the market will respond to our demands. That is after all the power of the consumer.

So what's wrong with feed lot beef? You have to read the articles listed above! But if you don't have time or just plain don't want to, here's my summarized version for you....I give this version to my friend Alli who doesn't like to read the articles, she'd rather I read them and then give her the abridged version. So here goes...Cows are designed to eat grass. They have multiple stomachs that digest the grass (or whatever other weeds are growing in the pastures). They can't eat and process corn like they can grass. So when we feed cows corn (this is what feed lot cows eat), they get sick. In order to combat the sickness, they are given antibiotics. I heard a statistic once that more than 70%, some sources say 80% but we'll be conservative here, of antibiotics produced are for agriculture. Who knew?? No wonder antibiotic resistance is on the rise! It's not even like they wait until the cows are sick to give them the antibiotics! It's mixed in with the food, the corn. This is common practice in the beef industry. So what do you think happens to all those antibiotics that the cows ingest with their corn? Yeap....it ends up with us when we buy the end product. Bon appetit!

Blog #2 Imagine that...I came back for a second run

So here goes….blog post #2. Again, what am I doing here? Why am I doing this? I seem to question everything I do…why is that? I was just reading an article on Oprah’s website, because I can’t watch TV anymore. Yeap that’s right girls….once you have a child, you’re lucky if you get to squeeze in an episode of John and Kate plus 8 at 9 pm at night. And no - you can’t just stay up later because the baby is sleeping – you are exhausted! You can try to stay up, but sleep will over take your body like an alien abduction. You have no control. Oh and the funny thing, the baby is sleeping…yes that’s funny because you know the baby is not going to sleep all night and he or she is not going to be in their crib all night!

Ok back to the topic at hand….the article was entitled the Truth About Motherhood. The article was full of moms describing how motherhood has changed them and basically, no one told them it would be this way. All I can say is…..AMEN SISTER! After the birth of my son, I felt like a lost soul wandering around saying “No one told me it would be this way!”. If someone would have said get through the first year and you’ll be ok, I don’t know if it would have made a difference or not, but I’d like to think it would. My advice going forward for moms, not that I’m the expert, is to take each day at a time. Just focus on small periods of time; just get through the first month. It’s so much better after the first month. Then it’s even better after the first 4 months. You will make it…I promise. Each month its gets easier and once you make it to year one….the angels in the heavens are rejoicing for you!

I can’t say much about life after the first year at this point. My little man is almost 15 months. New challenges are revealing their ugly heads! For example, I have to turn my back to him and hide the sippy cup while I fill it with filtered water from the refrigerator (heaven forbid we give our children tap water….you’ve all read what’s in tap water…I’m surprised the FDA even allows it into our homes! Please recognize the sarcasm. Yes I spent many summers as a kid drinking from the garden hose and I’m sure my son will too!) Anyway, he’s at the stage of wanting to put everything together and take it apart again. He could be dying of thirst and that is quickly ignored at the opportunity to take the sippy cup apart and put it back together again. Yes I let him do it as much as possible…but come on….sometimes I just want to get the water into the cup and give it to him.

So after reading the Oprah article, I decided that I would post a second blog. Hey if no one ever reads it then at least I got some things off my chest. If people do read it, then hey, maybe some of us can help others or at least we won’t all feel like we’re the only ones. Moms do need to support one another because we’re not alone in this adventure. I’m not really sure how that support should happen…maybe a blog, a play date, a mom’s group (no group for me though….I was kicked out of the last mom’s group I joined!). Any advice please post away!

First blog

Ok not really sure what I'm doing here but here goes.....So today I decided to start a blog. Yes I'm at work today and should be thinking about one hundred other things. However, to my defense...ok who am I kidding...there's no defense.

So who am I. I'm Holly, a 33 year old, married, mother of one, accountant by day and superhero by night...superhero only to my husband and son but isn't that all that matters? I have great friends and a great family. I, like every other woman out there, am always trying to find a better way, discover my purpose, balance the chaos and try to find time to enjoy a great glass of wine before the baby wakes up.

So that's me and that's all for today. Maybe there will be another post later....we'll see.