In which I am anal retentive and also there is a flow chart

Most of you are aware of my obsession with Let's Dish! Yes, the exclamation point is part of the name. For those of you who are unenlightened, Let's Dish! is a once-a-month cooking store/service. That's the closest I can come to explaining it. Basically, you sign up for a session online. You choose a menu. Then you go to the store and they have stations set up where you can make up to 24 meals. They have all the ingredients chopped and prepped, and you just assemble them. You freeze the meals and just pop them out of the freezer throughout the month.

I love to cook. I love diving into a recipe, losing myself in the flow of it. I love looking at a pile of random ingredients and using them to create something new and unique. What I do not love is trying to do all of this while two or three very short people are using me as a jungle gym. So I have loved Let's Dish! You go in, cook your ass off for two or three hours, and you're done for the month.

Which is why I was so supremely bummed when my local Let's Dish! stopped offering in-store sessions. They still offer what they call Dish-and-Dash. They will assemble the meals for you, and all you have to do is pick them up. I have tried it a few times, but it wasn't the same. I like being able to leave the paprika out of a dish, or add an extra pinch of cumin. I like seeing what goes in to what I am serving.

So I have decided to take the leap and do some once-a-month cooking on my own. In typical Monkeysparkets fashion, I have excessively over planned. There are color-coded spreadsheets involved. I have sticker labels and a flowchart. You are jealous, people, don't try to hide it.

My sister, who recently expressed a desire to learn how to cook, came over today to help me chop stuff I mean...partake of my culinary genius. Here is our menu:

• Lemon Dill Salmon
• Vegetable Lasagna
• Mushroom chili with homemade French bread
• Grilled Barbecue chicken
• Balsamic Grilled Chicken with Roasted Red Peppers
• Chili Lime Grilled Chicken with Black Bean Salsa
• Prosciutto Wrapped Chicken with Garlic Herb Cheese
• Chicken Fajitas
• Pepper Beef Stir Fry
• Baked Beef Rotini

All together, we made thirty meals in just over five hours. So, that breaks down to a meal every ten minutes. And I won't have to cook for a month! Yee haw!

I will do a few things differently next time. I will definitely do my shopping the day before I cook so that I can get an earlier start. I also may try bi-weekly cooking, as 5 hours was a long time to be on my feet in the kitchen (and a long time for Mr. Monkeysparkets to have both of the kids). If you are interested, here a few sites with good tips and info on OAMC (ooh-acronyms!)

http://www.frugalmom.net/once_a_month_cooking.htm

http://www.once-a-month-cookingworld.com/

So crazy it works

Recently we had one of those idyllic Saturday afternoons. The weather was unseasonably warm, we had no plans, the whole family just hanging out in the backyard.

"Gee," I remarked rather pointedly, "The neighbor's dog pooped in our yard again."

"Hm." responded The Mister, noncommittally.

"It sure would be a shame if someone stepped in it. It would get all over the house. All those germs. I sure wouldn't want to have to..."

The Mister heaved a big sigh. "I'll get it."

Victory! I thought. He trotted off, presumably to get a shovel and a plastic bag. My eyebrows rose a little when he returned with...a pile of sticks? They shot straight up into my hairline as he proceeded to use the sticks to build an elaborate fence around the poop.

"There!" He says with great satisfaction. "Now no one will step in it."

We've dubbed it The Poop Tree, and it's well on it's way to becoming a beloved family landmark.

"OK, kids, you can play outside. But stay away from the Poop Tree."

Let's face it, once you've named something it can be hard to get rid of it. Like our new pet, for instance:

His name is Clyde. What, you can't see him very well? Here's a close up:

Yes, Clyde is deer tick. I recently found him crawling on Isabel's shirt. If you don't know me in real life; you may be wondering why I trapped Clyde under a glass and named him, rather than just flushing him down the toilet like any normal human being. If you do know me in real life; you are probably just laughing because you know that I have a long and illustrious history of trapping insects under glasses. This is ostensibly so that I can identify them properly, but in truth it is because I have this morbid vision wherein my loved one has been bitten by an insect and I am running down the hospital corridors alongside the gurney and the doctors are shouting, "But did you save the tick???" And I triumphantly lift the glass in the air and save the day. It could totally happen. Also, I think letting insects suffocate slowly to death sets a good example to all the other insects.

Of course, after time it starts to backfire on me. The longer I leave Clyde under the glass, the more menacing he seems. Eventually, he starts talking to me in this cartoonish Brooklyn accent, "Eh, lady! Lemme outta this glass so I can bite your daaawtah!"

Yes, all ticks are from Brooklyn. And all mosquitoes are Mexican. The point is, and I do have a point, wait, no, I really don't have a point. Except that underneath this I've-got-it-together Mommy exterior lies a big swirling batch of crazy. And I'm beginning to suspect that the Mister has his own little batch of crazy brewing, too. Maybe that's why we work.

Is this what Awake feels like?

So we went to see our pediatrician yesterday for Isaac's nine month check up. He told us on no uncertain terms that a nine and a half month old is old enough to sleep through the night. He said that if I choose to keep getting up with him three times a night it will not cause any psychological damage or anything like that, but it is not necessary at this point. He also delicately asked whether Isaac was making up for the lost sleep during the day. Nope. And you know what? The little guy is just looking tired lately.

I feel really ready for sleep training now. I've said that before, but I feel ready for it in a new way. So last night I went downstairs and slept on the couch. My super stud of a husband offered to go in every half hour that Isaac was crying and reassure him. And you know what? We all slept wonderfully. I haven't slept for five hours in a row like that for oh, I don't know, about nine and a half months? And the Mister said he didn't have to get up once. Isaac woke up in a great mood at 6:45 am and we are like a bright, shiny new family.

I am fully prepared for the possibility that this was a tremendous fluke and that we are going to be in for the fight of our lives when we try it again tonight. But you know what? I'll take it.

Ours is a Forbidden Love

Mr. Monkeysparkets walks into the kitchen while I am Swiffering and wrinkles his nose.


“That stuff stinks”

I blink fast.

“What did you just say??”
“I said that stuff stinks. It smells like rotten oranges.”


A few moments of stunned silence go by. Eventually I ask in a small voice,


“Does it bother you?”
“What?”
“The Swiffer. Does the smell really bother you?”
“Nah. It goes away after a while.”
“Oh, good.”


He raises an eyebrow.

“Honey, if you had to choose between me and the Swiffer…”
“Never ask me that question.”
“Fine. But if I come home and find it in the bedroom, I am not going to be OK with that.”

Sleep Training

Right now? It is one am.

I am typing this post into Word so I can proofread and post it tomorrow after I have (hopefully!!) had a few hours of sleep and consequently have stopped hallucinating.
All that money I wasted on drugs in my youth, when all I really needed was a six month old to keep me in a state of chronic sleep deprivation.

Anyone else been there? We are sleep training. You can’t tell, but my fingers are dripping with sarcasm as I type the word sleep. Because sleep training has nothing to do with sleep, as far as I can tell, and everything to do with excruciating mental torture. It’s about as much fun as it sounds.

For those of you who are blissfully ignorant, sleep training involves taking an infant who is accustomed to sleeping with his parents and attempting to teach him to sleep in his own bed. By himself. You do this by putting him in his crib while he is “drowsy but awake”, giving him a reassuring pat on the head, and leaving the room. Then you wait for the mouth of Hades to open up on the spot and swallow you, because that is what happens next. There is no feeling on earth like listening to your child scream for you.

Of course, both parents are not affected by this the same way. Most men seem to have some sort of switch in their brains that allows them to “turn off” the screaming and sleep right through it. Most women, on the other hand, have the switch in their brains that takes the sound of their child crying and turns it into a uncontrollable urge to rip the skin off their faces and stuff it into their ears. I understand that biologically, this makes sense. He has to be able to get up tomorrow and provide for the family, while me? I can slap a Sesame Street video on repeat, make sure the knives and matches are all out of the toddler’s reach, and call it a day. So it’s a good thing that right now Mr. Monkeysparkets is snoozing like a non-sleep-training baby. God bless his twisted black little heart.

Just kidding! Love you, honey!

Actually, the fact that my hubby is willing to go through this whole thing with me makes him, according to my survey, better than 88% of all husbands out there. And he is astoundingly patient with my cranky, hallucinating, sleep-deprived ass. So seriously, God bless him. And as much as I complain, I do believe that for us, this is a necessary process. A little bump on the road to a well-rested family. We did this with our two year old, and after about two horrific weeks she began sleeping through the night like an angel.

I’m not going to get into defending the practice of sleep training here. If you are an attachment parenting zealot, you’ve already decided that I am going to parenting hell and nothing I can say will change your mind. If you’ve been where I am, you are just nodding sympathetically and saying, “Girl, just stick with it. It’ll all come out in the wash.”

Or something like that.