Happiest Holidays, friends!

Please don't tell me if I missed the pumpkin/cranberry boat. My heart can't take it. These days I have way too much on my plate and if you tell me these muffins are currently irrelevant, I will cry real and giant tears. I finally whipped them up after getting inspired weeks (and weeks) ago and haven't gotten them posted here until now. Sigh. I keep making lists upon lists and for every one thing that gets crossed off, 637 more things get added. How the FRACK do you moms/parents do it? And at Christmastime no less?! I recently read an article called How To Cross Everything Off Your To-Do List! (#mydream), and it basically involved a lot of perspective-changing trickery like: "Add some things to the list you've already done and cross them off!" and my favorite gem: "Let your house remain a complete shithole!". 

My December included lots of extra (and sometimes surprising) things to do like:

1. Wash 75,385 loads of laundry.
PRAY GOD, FROM WHENCE DOES IT COME??? It doesn't help that our thirteen-year-old dryer sounds like a dying pachyderm riding on a big, rusty freight train.

2. Read Brown Bear Brown Bear, What Do You See? 238,590,823 times.
Spoiler alert: RED BIRD.

3. Chase a scooting monkey around in circles interminably.
'Tis a full time job keeping him from eating ripped magazine covers and finding hidden TV remotes and iPhones as I steal head sniffs and cheek smooches.

4. Clean the floor around the highchair 97 times daily.
I have nothing pithy to say about this. It sucks rocks.

5. Try to remember the Zen quote involving chopping wood and carrying water.
Realize, ironically, that all this trying to remember takes me out of the present moment which probably means I am not yet enlightened. Shit.

6. (Barely) survive getting your eye (almost) poked out.
I was reading Louis a book (bet you can't guess which one) when a rogue baby fingernail wildly flailed into my cornea. MY LORD did it hurt. I literally screamed, "My eye!" and couldn't open it for 36 hours. All the while freaking out since I had a television job beginning in a couple days. And also of course because vision.

7. Have you ever been dropped off at the ER?
It's super hard not to feel sorry for yourself going in there solo. Even though my loving husband lovingly let me out at the front door (we didn't want to expose baby to ER germs), I couldn't help thinking how in the movies, some guilt-ridden criminal barely slows the car enough to kick out some poor sap who needs dire emergency care. Then they just lie alone on the ground bleeding, in a big, wide shot until some paramedic on a smoke break runs over to help.

8. Act like your eye is normal at the table-read for your television job even despite unaccounted-for chunk of cornea.
I couldn't wear makeup on the bum eye (Doctor's orders) but went whole hog on the good one. In hindsight (boo), this was a terrible mistake. Only donning mascara on one eye is extremely disconcerting to the viewer (see: A Clockwork Orange). And draws way more attention to your problem than you want drawn to it. At your television job. Where everyone is looking at you. Because you're going to be on television.

9. Take to your bed around 8pm for a few nights and listen to podcasts in the dark.
It takes a LOT of freaking eye energy to act normal when you're not. Your husband will realize the gravity of the situation when you cannot watch TV. Try and get a back rub out of it.

10. Finally start to feel better. 
When eye doctor extraordinaire Staci Sumner (818-789-3311) found out the hospital didn't insert a protective contact, she came in after hours to hook me up special. I could immediately blink without pain and it was all I could do to not kiss that magical woman on the mouth.

11. Enjoy adult conversations at work. 
"Can you believe a few days ago I was nearly blind and in the ER!? And now here I am on TV! Hahaha!"

12. Look at iPhone without sneaking it. 

13. Drink a hot beverage from top to bottom with zero microwaving. 

14. Clean the floor under a highchair zero times for two days straight.

15. Praise the Lord Almighty when, on first day of filming, you are blessed with the makeup artist to beat all makeup artists.
Admire beauty in mirror. Feel excited that co-workers will not believe you to be a Clockwork-Orange-freak after all. Profusely compliment makeup artist. Ask (half-teasing) how in the hell he made you so beautiful and try not to flinch when he explains (not at all teasing) that he's an expert in "corrective beauty".

16. Squat on dressing room floor so breast pump can reach boobs and electrical outlet simultaneously.
Wonder how long you'll continue to nurse. Cry about stopping. Cry about continuing. Cry about missing kid something awful. Realize crying is probably good for your healing cornea but bad for your corrective makeup.

17. Long for the long days of brown bears and loud laundry and head sniffs.
Text babysitter 836 times demanding mundane updates and bi-hourly photos.

18. Finish TV show. Go home. Smooch child profusely until he scoots away, most likely terrified. Enjoy him for 12 hours solid and then begin missing adult conversations and hot beverages and corrective makeup.

19. Wonder how any mother works. Wonder how any mother doesn't work.
Still figuring this one out. Stay tuned forever.

20-26. Somehow cram in Christmas shopping, grocery shopping, Holiday cards, meal preparation, blog writing, muffin making and personal hygiene.

27. Trim baby's nails.

I wish you a belated yet heartfelt Happy Holidays, dear friends. We have so many blessings to celebrate over here with our dude turning ONE on New Year's Eve! It's been quite a year. More on that later.

In the meantime, I wish you deep peace and love from the bottom of my heart. We have to cultivate all that goodness so we can spread it around this crazy world we're living in.

xxxxxooooo
jolie

P.S. These muffins are really good.
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Low-Sugar Pumpkin Muffins With Fresh Cranberries
makes 12
adapted slightly from The New York Times

These are nice and pumpkin-spice-y without being too sweet. And the fresh cranberries prove the perfect tart foil. Bonus: babies love the squishy inside part and you could probably use even less sugar and they'd taste amazing to a clueless baby.

3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 t ground cinnamon
3/8 t ground allspice
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1/4 cup butter, melted
1-1/4 cup canned pumpkin puree
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup fresh cranberries, rinsed and halved

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a muffin tin or line with paper liners. In a medium bowl, combine all the dry ingredients: flours, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, baking soda, baking powder, salt. Whisk together well and set aside. In another bowl, mix the butter, pumpkin puree and egg. Add the wet to the dry and stir until just combined. Mix in the cranberries. Divide the batter amongst the 12 muffin cups and bake about 30 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.

the corner of Wonderful and Grateful

The other day I encountered a jolly, older-man parking attendant and I commented on his good mood.

"Do you want to know where I live?" He asked, and I could tell he wanted me to play along.

"Sure," I said. "Where do you live?"

"On the corner of Wonderful Street....and Grateful Lane." He smiled big.

"Aw, how nice," I said.

"Isn't it?"

"I want to live there too!" I said.

His face dropped. "Well. There's not a lot of room here."

Alrighty then.

Unlike this dude, I'm all about spreading the joy. If I happen to find myself anywhere in the vicinity of Wonderful/Grateful, I say: come one, come all. Everyone's invited. Especially considering all of the tragic headlines lately. My tender, new-mom heart can barely take it. Instead, I've been trying to lean into the good with all my might, hoping and searching for some inkling of a silver lining. That we might be a little bit kinder to others? Even kinder to ourselves? That we might slow down and soften? That we might add to the Greater Good by looking even harder for things to appreciate? If so, Thanksgiving cannot come soon enough.

Some thankful things peppered in amongst some Joeycake greatest-hits for fall:

1. This Apple Music Friendsgiving playlist is happy and awesome.

2. This apple pie baked in a cast-iron skillet (?!) is my Dad's new signature dish and it is remarkable. I'm stepping up my campaign to convince him to make it for Thanksgiving. (Hint: it has caramelized brown sugar underneath the crust):

3. Pumpkin pie 4 life.

4. I know I mentioned Liz Gilbert's book Big Magic in my last post but it just gets better and better. Lots of great gems here about letting go of perfectionism ("just fear dressed up in fancy haute couture") and about finding your own (creative) way to live a creative life. I highly recommend.

5. Things I Want To Ask My Dog by the amazing Marsh McCall.

6. Blurry moments with a super busy almost-toddler:

7. Thanksgiving with 100 of your closest Vegans (plus a sweet potato dessert that is working undercover as a casserole.)

8. Orange you glad it's time for brightly colored, festive fall food?

9. Rare non-blurry moments with a super busy almost-toddler:

10. You. I'm so grateful for you. I hope you find as much Wonderful and Grateful as possible amongst your blurry and non-blurry moments this Thanksgiving. Thank you for choosing to visit me here and for being patient with my sparse blogging this year as I've been finding my mom-bearings.

Love to you,
Jolie

joy-sparking chocolate-chip cookies

I'm on day two of living with this lightheaded, tingly feeling, like I downed a few glasses of champagne without the fun of actually drinking any. Yesterday I was pushing the stroller and I felt like the weight of it was holding me down on planet Earth. Like if I let go, I'd just float away. I suspect I'm either approaching enlightenment or have some leftover flu symptoms from last week. (For the record, taking care of an infant while you have the flu SUCKS THE MOST.)

It just might be the enlightenment. I’ve been steeped in Marie Kondo's “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” and it’s causing me to look at my life through such a different filter. The book is essentially about de-cluttering and organizing. If you haven't heard about it already, Kondo (a Japanese organizing expert) recommends going through your entire house to get rid of anything that doesn’t "spark joy".  While I love this de-cluttering process, I love even more her belief about how to approach the discarded items. You thank them for what they meant to you and release them onward on their journey. This was a revelation for me. I've always enjoyed culling through my closets and paring down, but upon discarding, I've always leaned more toward the good-riddance school of thought. Once you get over feeling like a weirdo for talking to your old stuff, this part of the process makes the whole thing extra meaningful. Like you’re happily and deliberately letting go to make room for more blessings and abundance in your life, whatever that looks like to you. I feel lighter and freer already, which may be why I feel the top of my head levitating.

Something else I realized is that mostly I've lived with things around me that have made me happy but there were a LOT of things that were just kinda good enough. They worked. My feelings about them ranged from fine to meh. Clothes-wise, I had a lot of audition shirts that I wouldn't be caught dead wearing in the real world and it dawned on me: what would it feel like to actually have joy about the clothes I wear when I'm putting my best self forward to book jobs? That was a huge shift in my thinking. And after you look at your belongings this way, and ask this joy-sparking question of yourself over and over, this filter starts trickling into the rest of your life—your beliefs, your habits, how you spend your time, who you spend it with. What started out as a make-more-space closet endeavor, turned into something pretty profound for me. I'm holding my life and belongings to a higher standard now. Holding out for joyful. I gotta say, it feels really good. 

In related news, I started reading this book and came across a beautiful quote by poet Jack Gilbert:

"We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world."

Stubborn gladness! I love it so much.

I'm sitting now writing this in a cafe and incidentally, there is a guy sitting next to me eating a giant, lonely pile of tuna salad. He's chipping away at it like it's homework. I don't sense that it is sparking joy nor gladness. So it is to him (and frankly, to us all) that I dedicate these, the most deliciously joyful and glad chocolate chip cookies.

xoxo
Jolie

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The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies
makes about 30 cookies

2 sticks butter (at room temperature)
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 t vanilla
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 t baking soda
1 1/2 t baking powder
1 1/4 t kosher salt
12 oz bittersweet chocolate (straight-up chocolate chips or chopped into chunks. Or both.)
3/4 cup toasted, chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Whisk together well and set aside. In an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugars for several minutes until very light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides and add the eggs, one at a time, mixing them well as you go. Mix in the vanilla. Now add the flour mixture bit-by-bit, mixing until just incorporated. Stir in the chocolate and nuts. Drop 3T mounds of dough onto baking sheets (a small ice cream scoop works great for uniform cookies) and make sure they're 3" apart, six cookies to a sheet. Bake 15-18 minutes until golden brown. Cool for a few minutes and then transfer to a rack. 

Happy Friday:)

P.S. My latest comedic Huffington Post piece (that in my busy mom life I forgot to tell you about) can be found here:
6 Pieces of Game-Changing Advice For New Moms

how to take your infant for a stroll (in 70 easy steps)

Lately I often wonder where the time goes as these long/short baby days go whooshing by. And then I catch myself wiping sticky hands and kitchen counters for the 583rd time that day, or trying to blow zucchini purée out of my nose (I would say 'don't ask' but I have zero idea how that even happened). Don't even get me started on the time it takes to wash all these white wine glasses.

The time just goes, you guys. It goes.

I started thinking about the hidden time-costs in a simple stroller walk and it turned into a how-to article on Huffington Post. I DON'T KNOW WHEN I FOUND THE TIME TO WRITE THIS.

You can read it here:)

Love,
Jolie

snapshots 2015

Hello, loves:)

Wow. I can't believe I've been so long away. I'm still seriously finding my footing in this new momhood experience and all the juggling has caused a lot of most things to temporarily fall by the wayside. Mainly, it's that I've been using every possible spare non-Louis moment to write (and retool and change and tweak and pore over) a one-act play for this yearly breast cancer benefit performance that opened last weekend. I'm also directing and acting in the piece (control freak, anyone?), but putting myself out there as a playwright is proving to be a whole new level of vulnerability for moi. Crap. I'm definitely calling upon the wisdom of Brene Brown these days. (Do you know her? If not, she and her work are remarkable.)

If you're in LA, come out and see the show! It's called Snapshots and is such fun and for a great cause. You can purchase tickets here for this upcoming weekend. Would love to see you.

More soon soon soon.

xoxo
jolie

P.S. This guy is crawling, pulling to stand and has TWO TEETH:

blueberry corn muffins

There's a street light just outside our kitchen window and it's one of the romantic, old-fashioned kind we have here in the Hollywood Hills. It doesn't jerk on in an erratic fit like a florescent. It turns up slow and thoughtfully like it's on a dimmer and has the warm glow of an incandescent. Pre-baby, I considered it good luck when I happened to be awake early enough catch the magic moment when it faded off. Now I just call it morning. In the last five months, I've watched the sky turn light more times than the rest of my life combined. And while I adore my cozy bed (oh man, I could write a serious love letter), I do appreciate the special stillness of our quiet early mornings now. I have a mini sidekick. We hang out and have breast milk and coffee (respectively) while we chat. We watch the street lights turn off and the trash trucks rumble by and the birds flitting about the trees. I narrate the scene while he watches intently and babbles along and tries to put every single thing in his mouth.

This gloomy morning as Louis sat in his highchair, I stood in the kitchen eating a warmed up muffin that I had brought back from the deep freeze and I literally thought: this is a game changer. When a reheated muffin is a game changer, your life is either super depressing or it's gotten smaller, simpler, slower, and hopefully sweeter. Let's go with the latter.

But seriously: HAVE YOU EVER FROZEN A MUFFIN AND THEN REHEATED IT? It feels like the same kind of magic as the street light, an everyday, mundane miracle. Not unlike spending your days hanging out with an infant.

Blueberry Corn Muffins
recipe from Giada DeLaurentiis
makes 12

1-1/3 cups buttermilk*
2 large eggs
1 t vanilla extract
1-1/3 cup all-purpose flour, plus 1T
1-1/3 cup yellow cornmeal
3/4 cup sugar
1 T baking powder
3/4 t fine salt
1-1/2 sticks chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2" cubes
1-1/2 cups frozen blueberries (do not thaw)

*If you find yourself with no buttermilk (like I often do), just use regular milk plus the juice of one whole lemon. These muffins are great both ways.

Preheat oven to 400F. Line a muffin tin with paper liners. In a large bowl, combine the buttermilk, eggs and vanilla. Whisk well and set aside.

In a food processor, combine the 1-1/3 cups flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt. Pulse a few times until mixed. Add the cold butter cubes and pulse 5-10 times until the butter is cut in finely and the mixture looks like coarse meal.

Pour the dry ingredients into the buttermilk/egg mixture and fold them in until just combined. Do not over mix.

In a medium bowl, toss the frozen blueberries with the 1T flour. Add them to the batter and gently mix them in.

Divide the batter amongst the 12 liners, mounding it up in the middle. Bake for 20-25 minutes until a tester comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then remove to cool further on a rack.

If you wanna freeze these (or any muffins, for that matter), cool completely, wrap them individually in plastic wrap and then seal in a freezer bag. To reheat, stick them back in the muffin tin and pop them in a 350F oven until heated through, about 12 minutes. Try this and then tell me it's not magic.

xoxo
jolie

gluten-free olive oil cake with almonds

I've never thought more about sleep in my entire life. I've got a running tab in my head of how many hours everyone in our house has slept in the past 24 hours, how much time between all of our naps. I even dream about sleeping when I'm finally sleeping. And then ohmygod I hear myself talking about it to other people and I bore myself to sleep. Even my loving husband, who is personally involved in our household's sleep plight, told me my conversation was getting a little tiresome. Somebody please stop me. (I hope you're still awake right now.)

We had one incredible morning last week where we woke up before Louis. We sang and danced our way downstairs, made celebratory coffee and Instagrammed the whole thing before he stirred. Then the next night SUCKED. Even in the middle of it DP and I said out loud to each other: we jinxed it. Damn, we were cocky. So while we've had our successes, sleep still eludes us. That mysterious, fickle lady. I hate that I love her so much.

Aside from all things sleep, I'm starting to finally cook again for real and it feels grounding and good. Even if it's something simple like a roast chicken or a tomato salad or an easy cake. It makes it feel more like a home around here and less like a baby way station. Turns out the kitchen is good for more than plating take-out or washing breast pump parts.

This olive oil cake is fantastic and a real crowd-pleaser. It tastes like a seven-hour stretch of sleep after you've only dabbled in three-hour stretches for the last five months. Or like your four-month-old going down for a nap in his big-boy crib and simply rolling over and going to sleep WITH ZERO CRYING. It tastes like a drive on LA's most traffic-y freeway where your kid peacefully passes out in his car seat for your entire trip. Basically? This cake tastes like sleep. Delicious, tasty sleep.

God willing, you can well-restedly eat a slice with your celebratory coffee.

Gluten-Free Olive Oil Cake with Almonds
makes one cake
serves however many you're willing to share it with
adapted from Giada De Laurentiis

You can make this with regular flour if you like. Just omit the xanthan gum.

1-1/2 cups all-purpose gluten-free flour
3/4 t xanthan gum
2 t baking powder
1/2 t kosher salt
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
zest and juice of one medium lemon
1/4 cup half-and-half
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus a little extra for coating  the pan
3/4 cup sliced almonds, lightly toasted and coarsely crumbled
powdered sugar, for sifting on top

Preheat oven to 350F and grease the bottom and sides of a 8" round (or 9" square) cake pan with a slick of olive oil. Whisk the flour, xanthan gum, baking powder and salt together and set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the eggs, sugar, lemon zest and juice until pale. Mix in the half-and-half, and then gradually mix in the olive oil. Add the flour mixture bit by bit until combined, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Stir in the almonds. Pour into the prepared pan and bake until a tester comes out with moist crumbs, about 35 minutes. Allow to cool 15 minutes on a rack and then dust with copious powdered sugar. Serve warm or at room temperature.

love and zzzzzs,
jolie

one year

It's the one year anniversary of our sweet Lena's passing and I've had a squishy heart all day. A year ago, David and I were clutching each other in our deep grief, yet also newly pregnant and keeping our trepidatious excitement under wraps. There was so much unknown, so much behind us and so much ahead. And now, exactly a year later, we have a thriving, 4-month-old son who has changed our whole world. Today as we played and strolled and diapered, I watched Louis with such awe. Almost overnight, he's becoming more and more present and awake and aware, his little limbs getting more deliberate, his eyes really looking and seeing. So much ahead of him. And us too. We've come so far and yet we're still at the beginning. Right now as I write this, I watch the light fade outside my office window. I light a little candle for my sweet Lena girl and steal peeks at the baby monitor to see my little Louis's body, the shape of his head, an ear, a little hand. My heart is so full.

What a difference a year makes.

Love,

Jolie

{The beautiful quilt above was made for Louis by the amazing Alicia Paulson:)}

getting it DONE and also: pasta/salad

Well. In good news, I can finally get this kid napping! Unfortunately, this has to take place on my person with a bare boob pressed against his chubby face OR in the stroller while being kept in constant motion, preferably on bumpy asphalt while a light, westerly breeze wafts through his gauzy blanket. Seeing how these efforts account for several hours of our day, you can imagine this really cuts down on Mommy's free time.

Lately life has been great at doling out these types of lessons to me: get it done however you can and don't wait for the perfect conditions (read: BABY NAPS IN CRIB WHILE MOMMY TENDS TO BASIC LIFE NECESSITIES LIKE SHOWERING). Kinda like the photo above, taken in crappy lighting while DP was upstairs taking his turn tending to a screaming child as I nervously gulped a beer and made dinner, quick-and-dirty-like. Or like this blog post, hastily typed with one hand as I lightly jostle Louis into his next sleep cycle (God willing).

I still fight my obstinate old habits where, before doing anything creative (or hell, to feel like a successful human), I require zero dishes in the sink, a made bed and a completely crossed off to do list. That's not happening these days ever, creative endeavor or no. So here I am, working on letting it go, getting it done despite ideal/perfect conditions. In all areas of my life. Crap, this is HARD for me. All I do is bump up against my control issues. However, I know it's good practice for me because control issues. Have I mentioned I have control issues?

Four months in, DP and I are getting into an easier groove over here with our awesome little dude. We are still in the weeds, but instead of requiring a machete to hack our way through, they're lower now. We can actually see up ahead but those pesky weeds are still knee-high and the fuckers sometimes tangle around our shins something fierce. At this point I've been in the thick of the hard stuff a lot and often in my desperate, exhausted overwhelm I've thought: I can't do this and then I realize: I am doing it. It's happening. I'm getting up in the middle of the night for the fifth time because he needs me. I'm bouncing this kid on an exercise ball even though my back is killing me because this is what it takes. I'm "showering" with baby wipes, pumping breast milk and driving to an audition all at the same time because otherwise it won't happen. You get all kinds of resourceful when a small, helpless human is depending on you for love and food and survival, no matter the conditions. You dig deep. And thank God there's immense beauty and laughs and fun peppered in there so you don't lose your shit. The hard stuff is hard but the good stuff is better. And that cliche is true: It does get easier. There's tremendous momentum in making it through those rough patches. You start to remember you can. You are insanely capable. You will figure it out, despite conditions presenting themselves in ways that hardly feel ideal*.

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Pasta/Salad
serves 4 as a main dish or 6 as a side dish
adapted from Jamie Oliver's Funky Spaghetti


I forgot how much I like this one-pot meal--I'm bringing it back into heavy rotation, especially now that summer's around the corner, when tomatoes, basil and arugula are on their best behavior. Throw enough greens in there to make it healthy.

3/4 pound dry fusilli (I used TJ's quinoa/brown rice pasta)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 dry pint cherry/grape/baby heirloom tomatoes, halved and gently squeezed to remove most of the seeds
2 handfuls chopped basil
4 handfuls baby arugula
1/3 cup evoo plus more to taste
1/4 cup red wine vinegar plus more to taste
good sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup good grated Parmesan plus more for serving
1 package (4 big links) cooked chicken sausage of your choice (optional)

Bring a big pot of salted water to boil and cook the pasta according to its directions on the package. While the water boils and the pasta cooks, prep all your vegetables. Add these to a big bowl along with the garlic, basil, arugula, evoo, a good dozen shakes of the vinegar, salt and pepper. Stir together and let marinate. Meanwhile, slice the sausage into coins and brown in a skillet. Set aside. Drain the cooked pasta and while hot, toss it with the tomato mixture. Add the cheese and browned sausage. Taste for seasoning. (I usually wind up adding a bit more olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper.) Serve warm or at room temperature topped with more cheese.


Love you guys,
Jolie

*Once you clean up your fifteenth poopy blowout in a public bathroom you freak out about it less and laugh about it more. Especially if you've had a glass of wine first.

right now

My friend Amy gave me some great parenting advice: whatever stage you're in with your child, add the words right now to the end of the story. As in: my baby is having trouble nursing right now. My little one isn't sleeping through the night right now. My toddler has crazy tantrums right now. And you're smart to add it to the good stuff and the hard stuff. Because all of it's always changing and it helps not to get too attached to labels and results. Turns out this is much easier done in theory. Case in point:

Louis tortures me by hating to take naps...(wait for it)...right now. 

Yet (MOTHER OF ALL THAT'S HOLY) he's actually day-sleeping right now so I'm on borrowed time as I write this. Being extremely nap-determined today, I bent over his swing for twenty solid minutes and shush shush shushed so fervently I got woozy and almost passed out but IT WORKED, Y'ALL, so here I am trying to hurry a blog post.

It was a rough morning. I've been bringing Louis into bed to nurse around dawn and even though this requires about 27 pillows to make it not uncomfortable, at the very least it lets us remain prone a little while longer and if I'm lucky, we can both doze for a spell. (Surprising parenting tidbit #472: I've gotten really good at nodding off while someone sucks on a nipple. Who knew?) This morning while he was intermittently eating, he was thrashing about, doing lots of punching and kicking and pulling off the boob while his needle-sharp fingernails kept busting out of his pajama's hand covers. God bless the kid, he was scratching me something fierce and kept kicking me square in the C-Section. Giving up on any more sleep, I reluctantly climbed out of bed and took him to nurse in a chair, hoping the change of posture would help. Freaking exhausted, I frustratedly took him in my arms and assumed the position. He stopped wiggling, looked up at me with his twinkly eyes and dimple-smiled for a full five minutes. And just like that, when I come to a breaking point and think I can't do it, I'm bolstered with such overwhelming feelings of love and pride to be this awesome kid's mom. Turns out a burp cloth makes a good kleenex in a pinch.

I'll say it again (and probably keep saying it): I have such newfound respect for moms. Holy shit. I never realized how hard it is. It is nonstop 24/7. Your heart lives outside your body and your body is not your own anymore. It carries and holds and rocks and feeds and shushes and gets punched and kicked and tugged at. And time is not your own anymore either. When Louis's taking a (rare) nap, I have a constant low-grade anxiety about how I should spend the precious time. Shower? Laundry? Bill pay? Or something more spirit-nourishing like writing or meditating or exercising? Also, it could be 15 minutes or 2 hours so it's impossible to budget. Yesterday Louis's grandparents came over to visit and give me a couple hours to myself. By the time they arrived I was desperate for a break (again, zero naps), yet overcome with indecision on how to spend it. I finally decided on a nearby hike and then could barely tear myself away from him when I had the chance. I cried for the entire first half hour feeling like I was gonna miss out, felt blissfully child-free for six whole minutes, and then spent the hurried thirty-minute walk back to my car feeling like I was missing my right arm. I couldn't get home fast enough. Of course he was fine. Me, on the other hand? Oy. I've never been called to be in the moment more. And I'm learning that is truly the only way to have peace. God, help me do it.

Mommy is a little cuckoo right now.
Mommy is figuring it out right now.
Mommy is enjoying addressing herself in the third person right now.

xoxo,
mommy

27 Things My Sleeping Newborn Sounds Like in The Middle of The Night While I Lie There Praying He Doesn't Wake Up

A loose fan belt

A dragon with a head cold

A crappy ventriloquist

A rusty accordion

An injured pterodactyl

An entire family of raccoons

The grape lady

A haunted house's door

Anything needing WD-40

A constipated bird

A constipated grandpa

A constipated pirate

Little Richard

James Brown

Donald Duck

Gollum

Gizmo

Q*bert

Chewbacca

A peanut in a vise

A ticklish horse

A swarm of bees

A donkey that's tired of carrying your shit

A basket of angry snakes

A broken radiator

An ancient tomb being pried open with a crowbar

A stolen car peeling out of a gravel parking lot

xoxo
jolie

the new normal/oatmeal chocolate "breakfast" cookies

My friend Shannon told us that his mom sooooo adores completing things on her To Do list that she will literally write wake up as the first entry, just so she can have the satisfaction of crossing it off. David and I laughed and laughed. And then we started living with a newborn. Dear Shannon's Mom: I GET IT NOW. In my new baby-land of adjusted productivity, waking up is a huge accomplishment worth celebrating. You have a newborn and you managed to make coffee and drink two hot sips before said newborn stirred? Mad props. You took a nap? Miracle of miracles. You wrote a thank you note, dug up the correct postage and walked it to the mail box? Nobel Prize territory. In the middle of the night last night, I started a To Do list and actually wrote shower on it. With zero irony. God, help me surrender to this new normal. (And also sneak in a shower.)

In certain ways it's not so hard. This little peach of a dude is so cool and delicious. I am in awe of his littleness and his chirps and his emerging personality. AND: he started smiling this week. Bliss! Heartbreak! Wow.

In other ways, ALL of my buttons are pushed as I attempt to make peace with this new world of Never Getting Shit Done. As I nurse Louis (for a total of five hours a day, people), I look around me and take stock of things I'd like to do. These aren't even the fancy, enriching ones in my fantasies, just the dumb things that I can see. And they drive me nuts. Water that saggy plant, recycle those ancient magazines, get to that stack of taxes, fold that dusty pile of laundry. The neat-freak in me needs to take a long vacation. Most likely for the next 18 years.

No wonder moms are so good at multi-tasking. For reals: I am hooked up to the breast pump as I write this. I want to take a picture of it so bad but am afraid that instead of making you laugh, I would scar most of your eyeballs. (Poor David has seen too much.)

In good news, despite my growing list of To Dos, here are ten ways in which I've managed to adjust to this new normal so far. If I do say so myself, I have acquired some mad new baby skillz, yo:

1. I can type and text with one hand like a boss.

2. Picking up pacifiers with my feet? In the dark? No biggie.

3. Time me: I fall asleep in 9 seconds flat.

4. I can compile a stack of tax paperwork without getting poop on even one 1099.

5. I can disappear stains like a Vegas magician.

6. I've learned to scale back my beauty routine to the austerity level of a monastic.

7. I have swiftly stopped spit-up in a single bound before it's spewed onto the couch, a computer, and down my ample cleavage.

8. I have contained and harnessed said cleavage. (<------------ giant feat)

9. I not only welcome but find supreme delight in being farted on.

10. I discovered there are cookies (COOKIES!) for the express* purpose of producing heaps of breast milk.

*see what I did there?

Listen up. Let's just call these Breakfast Cookies because trust me on this: a.) you will definitely want to eat them for breakfast, and b.) you will FREAK PEOPLE OUT if you offer them a Lactation Cookie. Your normally sweet-toothed, cookie-loving husband will whiten and flinch like you are offering him sardines on a turd. The truth is they are really delicious morsels that just happen to make you squirt milk. If you are male and/or not lactating in the first place, they are just oatmeal cookies with chocolate. Nobody needs to know. Deal?

"Breakfast" Cookies (that also happen to help with lactation)
recipe adapted from bellybelly.com
makes 14-16 cookies

2 T flax meal
2 T water
1 stick butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
2 t vanilla
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 t baking powder
1 t cinnamon
2 T brewers yeast
1/2  t fine sea salt
1-1/2 cups rolled oats
3/4 cup good dark chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350F. Combine the flax meal with the water. Stir well and set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and brown sugar together for five minutes, until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix well, scraping down the sides occasionally. Add the flax/water mixture and mix again. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, brewers yeast and salt. Add these dry ingredients to the wet little-by-little, stirring until just incorporated. Add the oats and chocolate and stir to combine. Drop on parchment-lined baking sheets by the tablespoonful and bake for 12-14 minutes, until lightly golden on top. Cool on racks.

Extra credit: if you make these cookies from start to finish with one hand while holding an infant in the other, they are guaranteed to quadruple your breast milk output.

With love from the four of us,
Jolie, Louis and Jolie's boobs

P.S. It only took me 3 weeks to write this post. Good times!

the agony and the ecstasy

Greetings from Baby Central:)

For almost a month now I've been meaning to write when I have a moment but then said moment winds up being so fleeting between nursing and napping and procuring coffee and (God willing) sneaking in a shower. As I've been riding the wave of this early baby time (more like trying not to drown), I've been attempting to gather my thoughts about it. I don't know how I could ever be concise about what this experience means to me so far. It's a million fragmented thoughts and feelings swimming around inside my brain and heart. At this point, I can definitively say this: It's the hardest and most glorious thing I've ever done in my entire life. And also this: Whoever designs baby clothes with BUTTONS is a thoughtless asshole.

This new motherhood thing involves so many simultaneous extremes that to process even one of them is impossible. There's the profound, heartbreaking miracle that this little guy is here after all these months (years!), and the recovery from the huge mental, emotional and physical experience of childbirth. There's the ragged and thrilling haze of the hospital stay, and the sobering realization that you are suddenly and completely responsible for a helpless, tiny human. Pepper in some profuse hormone-balancing night sweats, someone sucking your virgin nipples raw every two hours around the clock, and then top it all off with a massively heaping dose of sleep deprivation. It's like first love, finals week, base jumping, jet lag, boot camp, seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time, and being awake during your own open heart surgery. You want to grit your teeth and get through it and simultaneously savor every second.

When you're about to become a parent, the party line is either Oh My God, It's Nonstop Bliss! or Get Ready, Your Life Is Over! The problem is each of those clichés individually does a disservice to both the experience and the new mother. In my sleepy, overwhelmed haze (even while consciously knowing it's all being lived through the filters of sleepless nights and haywire hormones), I cried to my own mom this week about all of it. After yearning for so long to get pregnant, I thought that every single second should be utter bliss, that I was an ingrate if a moment felt impossibly difficult. She lovingly comforted me. "Oh darling, all that you're feeling is crazy and okay and totally normal," she said. "Welcome to the agony and ecstasy of motherhood."

I get it now. The pain and the bliss aren't mutually exclusive. They intermingle into something that has its own unique label, its own custom blend, moment to moment.

You know what is pure ecstasy in this moment? This gorgeous little four-week-old face, baby clothes that feature snaps, and coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.

xoxo
jolie