Phil Hughes

I got a phone call this morning from my mom. She left a message saying "just calling to tell you that Uncle Phil died, the funeral is tomorrow. Your father and I will be in, it starts at 10 if you want to join us."

My Uncle Phil was old when I was young, and I get him confused with his brother Uncle Joe in my memory. They were my dad's uncles, the last of the Hughes men of the immigrant generation. They both co-owned a bar in the city which was called Hughes' when I was a kid and both of them were alive. When Uncle Joe died, the bar was renamed Phil Hughes'.

I have this memory of going there after the St. Patrick's Day Parade with the family and one of the uncles giving me chocolate coins and dollar bills. This is the clearest memory I have of either of the old uncles and I am not even entirely sure the memory can be trusted as fact.

The other memory I have of Uncle Phil is that he never had a plan on how he was getting home from family gatherings. At the end of the night it was always "Who is going through the city to give Phil a ride?"

I wonder if the bar is draped in black bunting. I wonder if the bar will be renamed later this month and I wonder if anyone can give me a ride home from the funeral.

Family Math

I come from a big family, there are 6 of us ranging from 41 this summer to 24 in September. The older 4 kids are all about 2 years apart (I think that's right, I bet Liz would know better) but there is a 9 year difference between me and my older brother (who is the youngest of the older 4). My younger brother is 4 years younger than me.

The hubby only has one brother and they are 3 years apart (i think, I'm lucky I know my own family's ages; and even them I'm not sure of)

Why all the numbers? Well for starters, me and the hubby are trying to figure out when to have the next baby....


I argue that having kids closer in age makes them closer to each other. My older siblings, though none of us talk much and are to spread out to really hang out together, always share such great growing up stories. They have friends in common, they all went to dance classes together and they are in general closer to each other than I am with any of them. My younger brother and I are somewhat close, but 4 years is a long time and I went away to college just when he was getting interesting as a person. BUT it's not weird for me to hang out with him and his friends in the way it is sometimes with my older siblings.

In general the hubby agrees that kids should be closer in age, but he also thinks that we should wait until the babe is school aged and a little less dependent on us.

I am torn. I am young and it took all of no trying to conceive the babe, so I'm not really worried about TRYING to have more kids....but I am concerned about costs, and the fact that I am starting to work in the fall, and the last 10 lbs I need to lose from the first one. If we want to have another this time next year (which would be ideal on a teacher's schedule) I would have to get pregnant over the summer and start a new job while pregnant...is that wise? Do we wait and see how work goes before thinking about it? Do we wait until after my sister adopts as to not steal her thunder (and to give the grandparents to hang out with their non-biological kin)? Do we wait until there is more money in our bank account? Do we wait until we FINALLY get to travel out of the country, which is what we are hoping to do this year with my extra salary money? Do we wait until we buy a house, something else we are hoping to use my salary for even though it is a pittance? Do we pop out the kids for a few more years and worry about me going back to work after that?

Do we stop thinking? Throw out the plans and put it all in the Gods hands? Do we track my abnormal cycle with charts and thermometers to force the Gods hand?

You'll notice there are no questions in my head about how we will handle having 2 kids under 3...holding my friend's baby (and watching the hubby voluntarily hold the baby) makes my uterus ache for another, I nannied for parents with 2 kids under 2 and I did it well so there is a big part of me that isn't worried about affording or handling more children heck there isn't even a question about what to name another child since we have names leftover from the babe.

So what do we do?

30 day challange

My sister asked me in the comments of my last post if I wanted to join her 30 day challenge to lose the last 10 pounds, she is canceling her gym membership on July 31st and is determined to finish what she started...

I am going to take her up on it and hitch my weight wagon to hers. I am sure she will do better than me for a number of reasons; the first being that she did weight watchers last year so knows how to eat, the second being that I am a little intimidated by the gym even though it is a YMCA. But having someone to share this with will help I think, and motivate me to make sure I actually get to the gym, and keep me honest about my progress.

I am going to post now that yes I accept the 30 day challenge, but I am not going to start until June 1...I have fellow Americorps veterans Mary and Jamie visiting me for Memorial Day weekend and a diet/exercise regime will prohibit us from recreating this photo...

I am proud to say I am lighter than in the this photo, but then again when I lived in the Ghetto of Billings, Montana I was basically living on free food from Americorps, pasta and buffalo- all fried in lard I think.

BUT I am only 5'2 and currently (or at least I think since we don't have a scale) 140 pounds. Before I got pregnant I was 129 pounds, which for someone as short as me is still pretty stocky, I gained 25 pounds with the baby and most of it was gone as soon as he came shooting out of me...so to have weight still on a year later is a little depressing.

So I am accepting my sister's challenge and will write about it here in all the gory detail. I guess this means I have to buy a scale

Going Nocturnal

For the next few weeks my hubby is working nights, which means he is home and underfoot all day. Neither one of us can be considered neat and tidy, but when he isn't home I can contain the mess, or at least clean it up as it is made. But now with him asleep on the couch most of the morning nothing is getting done. It also doesn't help that the babe is getting two more teeth so is sleeping more during the day, and when not sleeping being a crank.

Today we all slept from 3pm until about 6pm (after a nap from 10am-12pm) and here it is midnight and where am I? On the couch watching bad t.v. Soon we will be a family of bats.

The good thing about having the hubby around during the day is that I can get some time to myself; the thing I've missed most about having a mobile child is that I can't sit and read for hours in a local coffee place. When the babe was a babe it was possible, but now he wants movement all the time, which is fine except for when I just want a cup of tea that I didn't make myself. It also means I can get to the gym without bringing the babe. We joined the local (ish) YMCA a few months ago, so we could use the pool; and I swore that I would use the rest of it to get rid of the last 10 pounds, that was close to 4 months ago and the 10 pounds are rapidly turning into 15 (Mr. softee is back now that the weather is nicer) So I am excited to go to the gym without wrangling the babe.

Who doesn't love a montage?

The rookiemoms have challenged their readers and other parent bloggers to write about our favorite outings with babies as rookie parents... And it is fitting that it comes now as we celebrate the babe's first birthday. Since last night I've been poking the hubby saying "this time last year I was in labor..... I was yelling to get the baby out.....you were in the bar and I was trying to breastfeed" and other such memories from my first day as a mom. These memories of the first few hours of motherhood, prompted the hubby to get out the camera and look through old photos. He wondered why we had so few (friends of ours with a 10 week old have almost as many as we have over the course of the year) I have to explain that my mother takes about a year to develop a roll of film (yes film) because she forgets to take the camera out of her bag, I guess it's in the genes. Maybe I am genetically programmed not to take more photos, but here are some of the more interesting ones that made it through.

We take the babe everywhere with us, and as he was more than a week late these excursions began early in his life. The first real outing we had was to the Rangers Dinner Dance were I danced a jig with the babe in a sling, changed him on the first of many bars, and let him fall asleep amidst empty beer bottlesat 9 days old he already fit into the Gaelic Football crowd..

The next big outing for our little one was a trip to the Bronx Zoo, this was a large group adventure where we all really learned that a mom (or dad) needs to bring more than 4 diapers for a day long trip with a newborn.We also proved that human babies and monkey babies are surprisingly similar.

The gorilla baby and the babe are the same age (a little more than a month old), and just about the same size. The gorilla could perform feats of gymnastics, the babe had the power to wet through double diapers, shorts, a sling and my tee shirt in record speed. We also proved that a baby loves a bug carousel just as much as the next person.

Sweltering summer came and we left the city for the beaches of Long Island, where the babe watched two college grads try to put up a protective UV blocking tent for his enjoyment. This was after the same two college grads (one of which is now a doctor) spent twenty minutes trying to get a carseat hooked in correctly. The babe took it all in stride, the first time at the beach when we did get the tent up and the second when it collapsed all around us...

In the fall we went to Maine, where we discovered that the best cure for a teething baby at a wedding reception is a cold (empty) beer bottle.

We went pumpkin picking at the farmer's market for Halloween, watched the NYC marathon from the comfort of our curb, and picked out a Christmas tree at a local nursery. We rang in the New Year at a friend's house, complete with noisemakers and party hats.

There are 163 photos uploaded onto our online photo saving place, and there are another 260 on the broken camera, the new camera is up to about 75 photos and video clips, I'd estimate that most of these photos are of the babe's first year. There would be more, but I am like my mother; so much so that I would venture to guess if not for having a digital camera I would only now be developing pictures from my first days as a mom.

We have the first roll over on video, the first steps, the first haircut, and the first birthday locked away on memory cards and in our minds. We don't have the first real poop, or the first fancy dining experience on film, we do have the first bath, and we will have some potty training shots when the time comes. But I wonder if I will stop taking pictures of the big adventures in the coming years, or if I will overcome my genes and remember to take the camera out of the bag more often.

Mother of all Mixers

Last year around this time I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of my son. I was cranky, swollen and uncomfortable in all the ways that pregnant woman usually are. I spent this week eating leftovers from my brother's wedding because I refused to go into labor with dishes in the sink. The other reason was that all the leftovers were spicy food that I hoped would jump start the birthing process, I was eating jerk chicken and red beans with rice like it was going out of style.

I was finished with classes at that point so I had lots of time to wait and wonder. I walked around the neighborhood making people nervous, drank numerous cups of tea while sitting on the bench outside our local deli; the owner would sit with me and every so often ask if I was in labor yet. I also watched a lot of television. BAD television. I caught up on awful reality shows, watched every season of Kate and Allie in rerun form and cried over sappy commercials.

The ad execs sure know how to pull at a pregnant woman's heartstrings..little kids giving moms big hugs and diamond rings, moms snuggling little toes, grown children calling home to wish their mom a happy mother's day...It all made me cry, I was sure that I would still be pregnant on Mother's day, which in my head wouldn't allow me to be celebrated since I wouldn't technically be a mom yet.

But the babe came out in time...and my husband forgot that mom's like to at least have breakfast in bed on Mother's Day. He bought a card while walking the dog, but only after seeing a Mother's Day commercial. For some reason I was really upset that he didn't acknowledge the fact that I was a mother. I know it was the hormonal drop of being 3 days post partum, but I curled up and cried.

This year was different. I came home on Friday to a Kitchen Aid Mixer sitting on our bed. I've wanted one for a very long time, and I used to tell the hubby that nothing said loving like a KitchenAid. He bought it early because "Well you are making a cake for his birthday, I thought this would help, and you know make up for last year."

Now I feel like a real mom, maybe it is the new ability to make cookies and cakes (something I remember my mom doing with me), or the fact that the babe is a year old and I've finally figured out how (sort of) to be me and a mom...or maybe it is because there was an acknowledgement of my motherhood that didn't involve hints from me or the T.V.

This post brought to you by http://www.babycause.com and http://blog.parentbloggers.com.

let him eat cake

These pictures do not capture the joy with which the babe ate his cupcake. Yes he only got one cupcake with a candle as his own personal cake. The thing has lots of frosting and he didn't sleep the rest of the afternoon. BUT when he did crash he slept like the dead.

I was a little disappointed that he didn't blow out the candle, as we have been practising blowing for this very occasion all week! But his cousins were impatiant and blew the candle out for him.

There is now a spot on the wall that is a little lighter than the rest from where I had to wash off the frosting, and now two days later I am still scraping cake and frosting off his seat. My neice said that the hubby should have cleaned up "Well you're the one who gave him the cake, Uncle John!"

There is video of this but it is stuck on the camera...

Kung Fu Kids

I live in a weird section of Brooklyn, it's not quite Bay Ridge and not quite Dyker Heights. Both of those neighborhoods have strong Norwegian, Irish and Italian influences on the neighborhood culture. You won't find a Caribbean restaurant in my neighborhood, but you will feel like you stepped onto a Saturday Night Fever remake. Around Christmas the folks in Dyker heights are known for their outlandish light displays, and people come from all over to see them. When I tell people where I live I usually say "You know at Christmas all the houses you see on the news with the giant animatronic Santa's and lights all over? Yeah I live near there."

But what people forget is that this section of Brooklyn also borders Brooklyn's Chinatown. People don't look at me funny anymore because I carry the babe in a Mei Tai carrier, and I can buy miso by the pound in our local grocery store (called the Great Wall Supermarket). I also get to see things like this in our

favorite park. On sunday there was an Asian Heritage celebration on the basketball courts. There was dancing and music playing by local people from Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam, and China. I am sure there were other countries represented but I got there late (heck I didn't even know it was happening until I got to the park).

My favorite demonstration was the Kung Fu Kids, the youngest seemed to be about 4 or 5 and they were amazing. I don't think it is on the video but at one point all of them were doing head flips on the concrete.

Notice how the little girls are wearing pink, proving that pink is the favored color for ass kicking.

More from the neighborhood

This dance was called something like the Wild Prairie is my home...I don't know if I captured it on the video, but I am pretty sure this dance is the origin of the running man.

Family Updates

The babe will be one this Saturday, but we had a party for him this past weekend due to some scheduling conflicts. We had a few friends over, my mom (dad didn't come), the hubby's mom, the hubby's aunt and uncle (they are hubby's godparents) and my sister (not the one with the blog) with her kids, my sister in law also sent my nephew over with his babysitter (which was a little weird but he had fun)

I spent the day drinking and avoiding my mother in law. We don't get along very well when it comes to the babe. She has her ideas about how he should be raised and I have mine, you'd think that since I was the mom my ideas would be respected or at the very least listened to, but nope. I know that a lot of my feelings about my mother in law come from the fact that while I was still pregnant she told me I wouldn't make a very good mother. She said this because she was angry that I didn't want anyone in the hospital when I gave birth, and I didn't want anyone to visit in the hospital either. I was in the hospital for about 24 hours, and I wanted that time to be just the three of us. She was upset and felt that I was denying her, her grandson. She was also upset because I had said that if the babe was born I was going to take him to my brother's wedding regardless of how young the babe was. This is what sparked the not a good mom comment. She felt that a newborn with no shots should not be at a wedding. I felt that my brother should meet his nephew before going to Iraq.

It was all mote though as the babe was not born yet,and now everything the mother in law says is tainted to my ears. So when she showed up early this weekend I started drinking wine out of a plastic cup, mostly to give my hands something to do.

When my friend Gwynne arrived, I got to hold her baby for a long time, which was nice- what is even more amazing is that I don't remember the babe being as small as Gwynne's. And he for sure was at one point in his life...It made me want another soon. Particularly when the hubby (who had flat out refused to hold any newborns before having the babe) right away offered to hold the baby when Gwynne wanted to eat...

I also got to see my sister and her twin girls. I like having the twins around because they are older kids, so really like real people with distinct personalities. One, who is almost as tall as me even though she is only 7, likes to follow the babe around, the other likes to hang on to my sister. But the quiet shy one observes everything perfectly.

It is hard when my sister visits though, as there is no camaraderie of motherhood with her. She is a single mother not by choice, her husband passed away 7 days before the twins were born. She doesn't have it easy by any stretch of the imagination, and I would never in a million years trade places with her; but I don't like feeling like I can't talk about my own feelings of how hard motherhood is with her, because she always turns it into she has it worse.

This sister I think best embodies the family philosophy of no emotion, the suck it up and deal with it mentality that we all grew up with and all possess to some extent. I wonder if this sister will be a support and resource for my blog sister, or if she will turn her nose up and say "well you had a choice, I didn't".

My brother was at work as usual, his wife as well. Their son came with the babysitter who is quiet and shy in the face of our loudness. My nephew followed the babe around with my niece, avoided the dog and laughed at my friend Gabe imitating a duck for ten minutes

My other brother was in the desert somewhere. I am sending him pictures of the one year old nephew he has never met. He should have been celebrating his one year wedding anniversary on 5/5, what do you get a man in the desert for the paper anniversary?

Coming soon Video of cake!