I don't know what to call this, but it's about my post-baby appearance.

 Surprising admission from a new mom:  I don't hate my body.  I like it--hell, maybe I even love it!  I wish that weren't something that is considered surprising, but I mostly hear the opposite.  For the record, I think I took pretty good care of myself while I was pregnant.  I exercised and ate a healthy diet.  Luckily, the only things I even wanted to eat were vegetables and fruit!  There was a week that I really wanted soft-serve chocolate/vanilla twists.  What a sweet week!  

I was terrified of getting stretch marks, so I made sure to lotion/oil up my belly twice a day.  Things were coming along smoothly (ha), and then at 39 weeks, I was doing my moisturizing routine and I noticed something weird in the mirror.  I thought maybe I had scratched myself, since my skin would get itchy sometimes during my pregnancy.  Upon closer inspection, I saw three small lines.  They were red.  As I touched them, I realized that the skin was different.  My husband called to me from downstairs to ask if I was ok, because I was up there for like 30 minutes.  I came downstairs crying.  I felt terrible about myself.  You see these celebrity moms on the covers of magazines two weeks after having a baby, and they're wearing bikinis and are blemish-free!  Obviously I know that Photoshop is a big part of that perfection, but it can still leave a woman feeling like she sucks.  Now, I had little white stretch marks on my hips and thighs from going through puberty, but they were nothing compared to what I thought I was seeing on my stomach in the mirror.  My husband couldn't believe how upset I was, and he reassured me that I was still beautiful/hot/sexy, or whatever I needed to be in my hormonal head.  I developed a few more up until my delivery at 40 weeks and 4 days, and although I was bummed at first, I got over it.  After I had Ford, the few stretch marks didn't matter to me at all.  I'm also aware that my "situation" was not that bad, and there are women out there who get them basically from head to toe, but they still love themselves, as they should.  I'm still working on flattening the belly region, but I'm not moping around, only wearing the baggiest and most shapeless of clothing.

During my pregnancy, my skin was really nice!  I felt lovely!  When Ford was around 6 or 7 months old, my skin seemingly turned to crap.  It's like I was 13 again, only not in a "I feel so youthful and rejuvenated" kind of way, but more like "oh em gee, I'm a hideous goblin with this face!  I should just sit in a dark room and watch 'Laguna Beach' by myself and not see my friends!"  My skin still totally sucks.  I honestly don't know what to do.  It could be that I'm on a different pill right now, since I'm nursing and can't take the kind that I used to take.  I've tried a few different regimens, but nothing changes.  It's embarrassing.  I've never been a big wearer of makeup, but now I feel like I'm a slave to it.  As frustrating as it has been, I decided that I can't waste time lamenting over it anymore.  I have to do my best with what I have, and I admit, there are more important things to worry about.  I just tell myself that the things I do are more important than my pizza face.

I know that our new appearance can be hard to accept or get used to, but it shouldn't make you hate yourself.  And hey, maybe you look exactly the same as you did pre-baby, and that's awesome too!  Something important to remember for all of us moms, is that our body did a great thing.  It grew a person.  And now, we're still contributing to the growth of that person!  We're not "ruined".  We are just different.  For me, it's a good different.  Good old fashioned exercise and healthy-ish eating can make you feel better though--I promise!  I really do have a new appreciation for my body and my mind.  My hope is that this little piece of writing might be a pick-me-up for another mom who may not be feeling the same way.  Just because we're moms doesn't mean that we don't need to feel good about our appearance.  It's a hard thing to have to go out into the world when you don't feel like you have your best face forward, because most of your effort went into making sure your child kept his/her clothes on and ate some food, and didn't dive headfirst off the couch.  So don't forget to be nice to your mom friends if they are having a hard time.  None of our experiences are exactly the same, and some of us need more support than others.  Now, let's all hold hands and chant out to Mother Earth together under the Harvest Moon!

Breastfeeding--or as we call it in my house, "food from the boobs". Because we are classy like that.

Yes, "food from the boobs" is actually what we say.  I said it as a joke one day, and it stuck.  It's ridiculous.  We ALL say it.

Anyway, let me begin this somewhat complex post with this:  I don't claim to be an expert on breastfeeding, nor do I turn my nose up at women who do not breastfeed.  To be frank, I don't care how you feed your baby, because your baby is not my baby.  Unless you are literally abusing or harming your baby, I will not intervene in any way, shape, or form, until you specifically ask me to.  

I have had a lot of my new-mom friends ask me for advice on breastfeeding, because I've been doing it since day one of my son's birth, and I'm still doing so at 15 months.  Sometimes, I find it hard to be of any real help because I am one of those women who have had no obstacles to overcome with breastfeeding.  He latched on as soon as the nurses handed him back to me after being cleaned off post-birth.  My supply has always been abundant, and since I stay home, I never had to stress about pumping.  I have pumped before, and I have to say, that's the only thing that didn't work out so well.  I wanted to pump so that my husband and the girls could have the opportunity to feed him.  They were really excited about doing that, and I wanted to make it possible.  It was difficult for me to pump for a few reasons.  First, I was holding a baby in my arms who could see the pump in "his" spot, so he would push it away, and second, I really only got 2 ounces before I was over it.  I had a manual pump, so that may be why!  He also had little interest in the taking a bottle--when I was around, anyway.  Before he was eating solids, there were two occasions that I had to be away from him, and therefore, had to pump.  Now, if I worked outside the home, this would all have played out differently, and I would have made it a point to get my son used to a bottle, and made pumping a priority.  With that particular point, I am in no way saying that if you are a working mother who doesn't pump, that you are doing something wrong.

At around 6 months, people started asking me when I was going to stop breastfeeding.  I'm going to go on a tangent for a minute here.  Recently, I've seen a lot of blog posts and articles where women say that they feel like they must defend their formula-feeding.  In my experience, bottle and formula feeding is "the norm".  That's why there is a big push to normalize breastfeeding, because it's not considered "the norm".  In my life, I have never known any of my formula-feeding friends to have dealt with the sort of quizzing that I've dealt with.  But I've had SO many people--friends, family, and even people I don't know very well--ask me "why don't you just formula feed?" or "when are you going to stop?"; and while being with my formula-feeding peers, I've never encountered people asking them "why aren't you breastfeeding?"  That is certainly not to say that it doesn't happen, because according to the many blog posts and articles I've been seeing lately, it does!  Please keep in mind, I'm simply speaking from my own experiences.  I have someone in my family who can't believe I'm still nursing at this point, because that person assumes that my milk should have dried up by now.  There is a statistic through Northeastern University that cites that only 16% of infants are exclusively breastfed through 6 months.  So, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised when people are surprised at the length of time I've been nursing!  

Now, the advice that I have been giving to my friends who come to me with their breastfeeding struggles is as follows:

Do YOUR personal best.  Whether that is 2 minutes, 2 hours, 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months, or 2 years--you do what YOU can.  You do what works for your family.  And be as positive as you can, with whatever comes your way.

Again, that is for women who have proactively come to me and are breastfeeding.  This is not for a woman I happen to see out in the world giving her baby a bottle of formula.  She did not ask me anything.  Unsolicited advice is not cute.

I was nursing in public once, (which I do often) and a random woman gave me the "good for you" pat on the back, and told me she tried to breastfeed, and "failed".  I told her she didn't fail at anything.  And according to the look on her face, she hadn't heard that before.  That made me sad.  It also made me sad that she felt that she owed me, a perfect stranger, any kind of explanation!  I think there is a weird stereotype about nursing mothers, and that is that we are all a bunch a-holes who look down upon mothers who don't nurse.  I'm sure there are women out there who do that, but I am not one of them.  The kind of woman that I consider myself to be is one who will listen to you, support you, and help you if you ask me to.  I'll hug you and tell you it's ok, because I know that I need that sometimes too.

*Here is a picture of me feeding the little one that got reported on Facebook.  I took the picture because my husband was out of town, and asked me to take a picture of all of us, so this is what I captured.  I thought it was adorable the way my son was touching his sister's face, so I decided to post it on my Facebook, you know, where I have friends who aren't jerks to me about my life.  It got reported within 10 minutes of me posting it.  So lame.*

No Soup For You!

Just kidding.  I hope you get that Seinfeld reference.

No "Soup Nazi" here!  "Soup for all!", says this Jewish girl.  [quick "disclaimer"--I do eat pork.  I'm not Kosher.  However, I try to be on High Holidays].

Even though we had returned to a warm Vegas from the cool, Upstate New York weather, I was still in the mood for the kind of food you crave when it's cold outside.

I don't care how many people are picking on kale these days--I love this stuff!  Roger doesn't like the texture of cooked spinach, so this is a great alternative for him.  I, on the other hand, could eat spinach in anything!  Ford loves both, so, YAY!

As much as I love cooking, I follow recipes very loosely.  When I sat down to write this recipe out, it was a bit more challenging than I anticipated, because I usually just throw everything together without measuring.  I will do my best to make these recipes easy to follow, but if you have questions, throw 'em at me!

I call this:

Smoked sausage, potato, and kale soup.

I like to use organic, minimally processed ingredients whenever possible.  You'll see that the smoked pork sausage is not organic, but it's nitrate-free, hormone-free, and antibiotic-free.  The grocery store that I frequent here in Las Vegas is called Smith's, and it's part of the Kroger brand.  They have a line of products called Simple Truth, and Simple Truth Organic.  It's their in-house brand, and I belong to their "shopper's club", so I get coupons and they are really affordable anyway.

Here is a lovely little list of the ingredients:

• 32 oz box of chicken stock (or homemade!)
• 1 lb of smoked sausage
• 3 carrots (peeled or unpeeled, your preference)
• 2 medium-large potatoes 
• 1 large bunch of kale, leaves torn from stems
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced 
• 1/8 cup of dried minced onions (or 1/4 cup real onion)
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

Mince the garlic, cut up the carrots and potatoes, and rip apart the kale.  I didn't peel the potatoes or the carrots; I just scrubbed them under running water.  Slicing the smoked sausage into coins is my preference, but you could cut those in half if you like smaller pieces.  

 As you can see, I'm using a french oven here.  Roger got it for me last Christmas and I absolutely love it!  I sauteed the garlic and dried minced onion in a few glugs of olive oil.  I have a serious aversion to onions, but I think I'll use real ones next time, because the dried ones cook really fast!  I need to break the onions down in my food processor almost to a paste, because I can't handle biting into one.  I'm such a baby about it, I know!  I added the sausage and let that brown a little bit, and then threw in the carrots, and gave it a good stir.  As you can see, some of that dried minced onion just about burned.  OOPS!  

Add in the potatoes and the stock next.  Also, some salt and pepper.  Let it come to a boil, and then simmer with the lid on for about 12-ish minutes, or until the potatoes and carrots are tender.  

The milk and kale are lonely for the 12 minutes that everything is simmering together on the stovetop.

Stir in the milk and kale.  The kale wilts to our liking pretty much right away, so this was ready to go! 

And there you have it!  Sausage, potato, and kale soup.  I'm just starting out with photographing food, so I realize the above picture is not the most beautiful.  We all loved it though, and Roger took the leftovers to work the next day, and says it reheats well.  Let me know if you try it out!

Halloween/Fall trip to Buffalo, New York

We recently came back from a trip to Buffalo, NY.  I was so glad that my family got to see a "real" Fall, and go trick or treating on a brisk evening.  My wonderful cousin and her family hosted us, and we had a great time!  As I am a frugal lady, I made our Halloween costumes.  Now, when I say "made", I mean that I got some pieces of clothing/material together, used a Sharpie, paper, tape, and safety pins.  There was no sewing involved, because I just don't have that kind of skill!  We were Starbucks-themed.  Roger and I were baristas, and the littles were drinks.  Bug (this is what we call Aryanna, by the way) was a Strawberries and Creme Frap, and Ford was coffee (decaf, of course).  We also got to go to Niagara Falls, which was really spectacular!

***

Traveling with Ford makes me nervous every time.  I see the looks of worry on peoples' faces when they see him squirming in my arms at the gate; thinking he's going to be a nightmare on the plane.  This was the 5th time flying for him, but the last time he flew, he was only three months old, so he was sleeping a lot more those days.  I am still nursing him at 15 months, but he's certainly not a newborn anymore, and there is so much to stimulate him at this age, so I wasn't sure how this would go.  Although he was hollering while we waited to board, once we settled down on the plane and we began to take off, I nursed him to sleep relatively easily!  He started to stir during our descent into Buffalo, and I finally exhaled all the breath I'd been holding in for the four-hour flight!

Waiting for our plane to NY.  Bug was playing her rendition of "Cups" with Ford's water bottle.  Ford was being his creepy little ginger self.

Bug couldn't wait to experience this type of weather.  She wanted to go crazy in the leaves!  Bundling up and going outside was fantastic, and even though she was cold, she didn't want to come inside.  Ford kept trying to run into the street, so Roger had to be his shadow.

I love how they're standing the same way!

***

Prepping for Trick 'r' Treating was serious business.  I had to tape Starbucks logos onto shirts and hats and aprons.  I drew the order preferences onto Ford's plain white shirt because I got it on sale at Target for around $2.00.  However, for Bug's costume, I cut little rectangles out of printer paper and safety pinned them onto the back of her sweatshirt, because she can totally wear that again!  And it should last her a while.  After all, it's a women's XS from H&M!  (Ford is wearing his Halloween costume for pajamas now.  I refuse to use something like that only once.) 

Trick 'r' Treating in my cousin's neighborhood gave me the warm fuzzies.  Her neighbors were so sweet!  The sense of community there was a lot different than it is in Vegas, and we live in what is considered to be a family oriented area!  It was drizzly and a little chilly, but not bad at all.  Bug said that she wished it would rain on Halloween, and rejoiced in her wish coming true.  I rejoiced in gorging on the candy haul later after the kids were sleeping!  Muahaha!

The Sharpie is mightier than the embroidering machine

Ford was trying to jack Aryanna's straw.  Rude.

His first piece of candy!  Although, he really just chewed through the wrapper and melty goodness came out.

***

Niagara Falls took our breath away, but the park there was equally beautiful, in my opinion.  We walked from one side of the falls to the other, and got quite the workout doing so!  It was really windy on the one side, and peaceful on the other.  Ford was fast asleep on the loud, windy side!  Walking through the peaceful side, I could smell the leaves and I realized how much I missed the Northeast.  

Aryanna wished on all of the 15 ladybugs she found at the park.  We would be walking, and turn around to find her way far behind us, crouched down and talking to her hand.  By the time we were done with our little tour of the falls, we were starving and had to hit up my favorite grocery store in the Northeast:  WEGMANS!  The subs are SO good, and I literally had written down "eat a Wegmans sub" on a list of things that I needed to do while in NY.

It saddened me to leave, so hopefully we can go back next year, and have more touching family moments like this:

Introduction to Lily & Co.

To begin, I just want to say THANK YOU for stopping by my blog!

As this is my first post, I wanted to tell you a little bit about myself.  I'm a native of New York.  A transplant to Las Vegas at the age of 19.  I moved here by myself, with little money and a job interview lined up.  Luckily, I got the job because my funds were running low, and I lived in a pretty scary neighborhood that I was looking forward to moving out of after the first month.  I still shudder to think about the black mold in my studio apartment, and the shower that only sprayed hot water for six minutes.  That's just the short of it.  However, with all of the bad, I was actually really happy to be out on my own, and far from everything I'd ever known.  I worked three jobs to keep busy, and I had virtually no social life since I wasn't 21 and I didn't know anyone.  But I made some great friends, and had a lot of Vegas-y fun once I was old enough.


Fast forward to my 23rd year.  I started a new job, and met THE guy.  Roger is the introvert to my extrovert.  He had with him two wonderful daughters, Drake and Aryanna.  He proposed to me on a perfect June evening, after we'd been dating for about 8 months, and we got married the following February.  Pretty soon after we got married, he made a career change.  After he'd been with his new company for a little while, we decided to try to make our family bigger by one member.  Right before Christmas, we found out we were expecting!  I had a pretty great pregnancy.  My labor and delivery were probably perfect.  And then there was Ford!

We've had a lot of changes since then.  I stay home now.  Stay-at-home-mom.  Homemaker.  Housewife.  So weird.  To be honest, I really never thought I'd have children, let alone not go out to a job everyday.  Some say what I'm doing is the hardest job there is.  I can certainly agree in many ways.  However, I'm grateful for the experience.  There are no deadlines to meet.  No annoying customers.  I don't have some jerk boss to answer to (well, Ford has his days, I suppose).  But there are also no state mandated lunch breaks or paid days off.  Or other adults to talk to during the day.  I'm still trying to figure out the delicate balance of things, nearly 15 months later.   Although, I don't think I'll ever truly find it, because every day is different.  This is perfectly fine with me.  I'm never bored!  Much of this blog will be related to how I learn and grow while my son is, uhh...learning and growing, and all of the "oy vey" moments that go along with that!

 

As you'll see, I enjoy cooking.  Creating recipes or altering existing recipes is something I really like to do.  I love Pinterest for this reason!  Well, I also love Pinterest for making me believe that I, too, can be a super crafty, stylish mom.  HA!  Crafting is fun, and even though my results are rarely perfect, I will still take pictures of my sloppy crafts and share them with pride!  As for the stylish aspect, I'm on a very tight budget, but I think I work my closet pretty well.  I plan on continuing my education eventually, but I changed my mind about what I wanted to do when I left college in NY.  At this time, I don't really want to pay for college when I don't have a clear goal in mind.  So in the meantime, I'm doing my best at living this life.  Feel free to follow along :-)

OH--and as evidenced by those towels on our stove, we like our beer around here!  Cheers!