Our Picks for Best Books Ages 0 to 2

May 17, 2013

books

 

 

First Book Ever:

 

Board Books:

 

Activity Books:

 

Picture Books:

 

Storytime:

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OK, Fine. Pregnancy Bed Rest Sucks.

May 16, 2013

I got up at 3 AM today. I get up at 3 AM almost every night. Laying around in bed all day just doesn’t take any energy, so I can’t get my body to snap into an eight-hour-per-night rhythm. I wake up tired, but so bored with sleeping (and bed rest and life) that I can’t possibly do it for one minute longer.

 

I’ve tried to stay positive through this bed rest, because negativity doesn’t do anybody any good. Plus, with all of the scary, it’s good to focus on the silver linings and the little blessings and all that. Lord knows that I’m blessed. I’m 36 days into bed rest today and this baby is still cooking and kicking and growing and being ok. My house is clean, dinner was delicious, banana pancake batter is waiting for us in the fridge, and the rest of my day is filled with movies and creative work and Pandora and then more sleeping while other people take care of my chores and house and kid. Insert picture of lucky duck here.

 

But sometimes I just…blargh.

 

bed rest

 

This 3 AM thing is the hardest. When it’s dark and quiet and a combo of too early/too late, there’s nowhere to go but down. And I do. I feel sorry for myself at 3 AM. I think about everything that isn’t getting done, all of the things I’m missing out on, how nothing about this baby is certain, etc. I try to cling to that silver lining, but everything turns inside-out in the middle of the night. The fact that I’m getting meals served to me in bed becomes a teeth-grinding need to get up and cook something. Eva being ferried to and from school becomes tears because I don’t get to be there for her preschool “graduation” and the big school-wide party. The cleaning lady gifted to me twice a week by my dad and his wife becomes panic that the house isn’t organized and nothing is ready for the baby.

 

Give me a chance and I can pretty much see the downside of everything.

 

I do pull myself out of it around sunrise every day and by mid-morning I’ve usually snapped back into “blessed” mode, but I thought it would be a disservice to present all of pregnancy bed rest as some kind of vacation from life. I don’t want to be doing this. I’m sick of being in bed. I miss my kid. I miss doing things with my husband.

 

I miss my friends, especially now that visits have stopped. It’s not them, either. Realistically, it’s hard to entertain people in your bedroom. Half the time, I don’t know if the house is a mess, but I know I look like crap and I can’t really do anything and every time I invite people over they tend to bring stuff and I hate to put people out. It isn’t just that I miss my friends – I miss escaping with friends to restaurants and coffee shops and impromptu play dates. Even phone dates have gotten a little hard because there’s no updates and nothing to talk about on my end. I can wait three weeks before talking to someone again and absolutely nothing in my life has changed. I usually don’t even know what day it is. So then there’s lots of pressure on the other end of the phone for people to come up with stories to entertain me. And everyone is busy, which I remember because I used to be too busy to talk on the phone as well. Blah.

 

Anyway, I just wanted to let you peek at some of the gritty, unpleasant realities of what’s going on. Again, so lucky…but don’t wish this on yourself. I’m glad that I have the opportunity to do this, but this is so not how you want to grow a baby. Honestly, this sucks.

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People Can See Your Face (A Mother-Daughter Moment)

May 15, 2013

I watched Overboard on Netflix this past week and rekindled my deep affection for Goldie Hawn. If you haven’t seen it, it’s comic gold. “I just…ate a bug!

 

Goldie’s beautiful daughter, Kate Hudson, is a brand ambassador for Almay hypoallergenic cosmetics. I’m very familiar with the brand because my family has the world’s worst skin and any kind of added anything gives me hives. It’s not a surprise that they’re working with Kate, since she’s all about natural beauty (which is much easier, btw, if Goldie Hawn has given you a few genes). They did a mother/daughter video and it’s amazing how pretty they both are. They also look like they’d be fun to hang out with because you can tell they adore each other:

 

 

When I was eleven, I started the seventh grade. One of my first classes was the vocational equivalent of home economics – some complete waste of time where I learned shorthand and then never ever used it again. On the first day of class, I took a seat in the back and had a perfect view of the entire class quieting down when a certain student entered. She was tall, curvy, and had long curly hair with blonde streaks running through it. Her face was made up perfectly – like she was about to walk the runway at some beach front fashion show.

 

I mostly remember her because she sat down next to me and I’ve never been so uncomfortable in my own skin. Sitting next to the prettiest seventh grader in the world was like accidentally showing up to school naked. All I could think was that everyone in the class must be thinking that I looked like an ugly ducking little kid next to her.

 

I went home that day and immediately attempted to experiment with makeup. Of course, at eleven I didn’t have anything besides a few leftover pieces of Halloween makeup, so my results were less Cindy Crawford in Fair Game and more Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest. One of my mom’s best friends was visiting when I popped out all done up and she took pity on me and came back the next day with a plastic basket full of cosmetics.

 

I got hot pink lipstick, bright red lipstick, bright blue eyeliner, a palette of green and purple eyeshadows, sparkly pink blush, and chunky mascara. It was all the lowest priced stuff the grocery store has to offer, but I was thrilled and went to school every day that week with my hot pink lipstick and my bright blue eyeliner (which, I found out later, was supposed to go along my eyelash line and not along the crease in my eyelid). Within a day of application, I had broken out wherever I put the blush and one eye was continually puffy from the sticky clumps of mascara falling into it, but I pressed on figuring that was all the price of beauty.

 

After that first week of awkwardness was over, my mom told me that we needed to go to the mall. That Saturday morning, she introduced me to department store cosmetics and had the ladies at the counter give me an hour long lesson in proper application. I learned about choosing colors, highlighting/shading, accenting features, and doing your makeup so it looks like you aren’t wearing any. And then my mom dropped quite the wad of cash and bought me an entire line of quality cosmetics.

 

We went out to lunch afterward and I pointed out that we could have saved money by sticking around for the makeup lessons and then going to the grocery store to buy all of the cosmetics. My mom just shook her head and said, “There are some things you don’t want to save money on. Your face is one of those things. People can see your face. There’s a big difference between good cosmetics and bad cosmetics and if you walk around wearing bad cosmetics, that’s all people see. Either splurge on the good stuff or just skip it all together.”

 

This is why moms are important. They walk around holding all the secrets of the universe.

 

Note: This is a sponsored post for Almay cosmetics. I received compensation but all opinions and thoughts are my own.

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