The hard parts

In the interest of full disclosure, motherhood has been a blessing, and all the stuff I wrote last week is true. But there are some hard things, and we definitely struggled and continue to struggle in some areas. The biggest challenge for us was feeding.

I was warned that breastfeeding is hard and doesn't always work. And I thought I had prepared myself for that, but there really is no preparing yourself for it. I've said it over and over, breastfeeding is the hardest thing I've ever done.

E and I struggled a lot. I am incredibly grateful to a lactation consultant that spent hours with us and still answers my questions by email.

I know there is a lot of criticism these days about elevating breastfeeding as the ultimate standard of being a good mom. But there is no judgment from me. E and I worked hard to get it to work for us, but I also know that we could have worked that hard and still ended up switching to formula.

In the first week when every feeding was a fight, and we were supplementing, it felt like all I did was attempt to feed her, pump and sleep. At one point through tears, I looked at my mom and said, "I feel like I don't even get to enjoy her." My mom said to me, "If that's the case, then it's not worth it." And she was right. The most important thing was that E was healthy and growing, but it was also important for me to be happy. We did move past that stage of fighting quickly enough that I didn't feel like I needed to quit, but that possibility often lingered in the following weeks.

But by six weeks, E and I found our groove and 95 percent of our feedings are successful with limited crying (from either of us).

One of the best moments came a few nights ago. We've been experimenting with giving a bottle of breastmilk at night in hopes of filling her up to sleep. I was giving her the bottle, and she didn't want to take it. She wanted me and that felt like such a victory. I thought back to when she was four days old, I sobbed while giving her a bottle that she sucked down as fast as she could because she was so hungry.

Now, she's over 10 pounds with her cheeks getting chubbier by the day.

Seven weeks in...

It's been a year and a half since I blogged on this site. In that time, I've gone back to school and finished my masters degree in journalism and had a baby. Now that I've come out of the baby fog, I find myself wanting to write about what I'm learning in this new stage of life. No guarantees of how often I will write, but I wanted to have an outlet.

I have a seven-week-old. Most days I'm still in awe of that.

I have always wanted to be a mother. There is a video of me when I was 4 or 5 where my parents ask me what I want to be when I grow up. I respond, "A mommy." I also say I want five children, but I didn't understand the whole pregnancy/childbirth thing at that age.

I always loved children and babies. My mom did let me regularly hold one of the twins when I was 3, and as they got older, I saw the opportunity to use them as part of my imaginative play. As soon as they could sit up, they were my students. All of my jobs in high school involved nannying in some form with children ages 4 months to 7.

But during my single years, I wondered if this dream of being a mom would ever become a reality. Even when I married Jesse, I wondered if I could get pregnant and whether my body could handle pregnancy. (It turns out pregnancy and breastfeeding have given me relief of my fibromyalgia symptoms.) I never stop thanking God for the blessing of the pregnancy and our baby girl. I know we are incredibly blessed by how smoothly everything went.

After all those years of being the nanny or babysitter or aunt, it is incredible to actually be the mom. When you are just filling in for mom, you know that child isn't crying for you, and you also get to hand the child back to the parents when he or she is screaming. But now I'm the one everyone hands the baby back to, and I am actually able to calm her down when no one else can. (Well, most of the time...)

There are things that are harder than I thought, but there are so many more things that are much sweeter and more rewarding than I ever expected. In this time that I'm home with her, I get to see it all — the fussiness but also the smiles and coos — and the good far outweighs the bad.

One of my favorite things is how she puts her hand on my chest when I'm rocking her, and you can't beat seeing this smile.

Grocery Gadget

I am probably one of the worst grocery shoppers. Even when I actually make and remember  to bring my list, I still manage to walk out without stuff on it. I am easily swayed by sales or coupons and end up spending money on something I won't eat or use, justifying it by saying, "But I saved 50 cents!"

Now that I am grocery shopping for more than just myself and I live at least 20 minutes from the nearest grocery store, I have to get better. And when J and I have tried to plan a budget and think about what this year will be like financially, I realize I have no idea how much I spend on groceries every week or month. I also shop at several different stores but have no idea how the prices compare. Sometimes one feels cheaper, but I've never tracked it closely enough to know if it's true. I'm not trying to be a crazy coupon lady, but I'd like to make smarter decisions in my weekly shopping.

In the age of the iPhone, I figured there must be an app that would help me do that. I asked for suggestions on social media, and just got one tip. I didn't really like that option, but by reading the reviews, I found Grocery Gadget. I'm still getting used to it, and it is taking time to build the database of what I buy. But overall, I think it will help.

I am able to create a weekly grocery list using a list of products or by adding new ones. Then I can get on before I shop specify quantities of stuff I need to buy and leave off stuff I don't without eliminating it from the master list. When I shop, I can scan barcodes to add specific item information to the database and put in the price of each item. The first time I used it, I added that info as I shop. It helped at checkout because I knew how much stuff was supposed to be. But I can also add the info when I unload groceries if I'm crunched for time at the store. I can add prices for items at each store I shop at, so I will actually know if I got it cheaper somewhere else or if I'm getting a good deal and should buy more at the cheaper price.

On the website, it tracks my spending by month, so I can actually account for what I spend on groceries and maybe I'll even start to see a difference. I'm also using it to track buying gas and even those 3 or 4 item trips to the store since those add up after a while.

We'll see if I can keep up the work required to continue to track it.

A new blog

Today marks the first day of a new chapter in my life. I'm starting graduate school full time at Mizzou. Thanks to J, I'll be able to dedicate the next year to school to finish my masters, which will give me more opportunities in my field. It's exciting but also pretty intimidating since I've been out of school for eight years.

I've decided to create a blog dedicated to my school/professional life and let this one continue to be a personal blog. I'm not sure how much either will get updated, but I needed a professional presence on the web (and also tie it to my new name).You can find it at: elizabethstephensblog.wordpress.com. You'll find that at the moment it's backdated posts from this blog republished there. But soon it will be more about my graduate school experience.

Don't feel obligated to follow the new one (or either), I just wanted to let everyone know that it is out there and might be updated more frequently than this one.

The Fitbit and the power of competition

The university has a deal on Fitbits — a pedometer — for employees. You buy it at a discounted rate, and once you reach 1 million steps, they refund your money. A couple of my coworkers got them and decide to start a newsroom competition.

I was curious about how many steps I take and needed some motivation to get back to the gym now that the wedding is over. So I decided to get a Fitbit and join the competition.

Here's something you should know about me. I played competitive soccer until I was 15. Yes, my dad (also my coach for many years) always said all that mattered was having fun, but I was competitive and liked to win. Pretty much any physical activity, I could make competitive. I always wanted to be the leader on hikes or family walks. I can get into board games and such, but I never got that competitive with them (mostly because I'm not that great at them). But physical activity was always a competition.

It has been a long time since I've been in a true physical competition, but it all came back to me when I started this competition. The Fitbit app lets you see where your friends are, and you can see weekly rankings. 

And it changed my habits. I was going back to the gym and finding excuses to walk across campus or downtown. When I don't go out for lunch, I walk the quad. I park farther away when I am out running errands. I stop at the trail on my way home from work on cooler days. 

We also got a bike for J, and biking has become our new hobby. We live near a biking/walking trail that goes across the state. We've been biking various sections of it, increasing our mileage. (I get to wear the Fitbit while biking. I only got six miles of steps for riding 24 miles on Saturday.)  So that's my other activity to gain steps, and it's something we can do together (well, kind of, J rides much faster and challenges himself to ride farther than me and catch up).

I'm only a month in to the competition, but I have to say it's been good for both of us. Some really nice weather has helped us as well. Just need to keep up the momentum.

Registry tips

For us, getting married was not about getting gifts at all. But registry or not, people are going to want to give you gifts. Registries just provide some guidance. We were so blessed by everything we got — registry gifts, personalized items, specially picked out items, etc. I don't want this post to sound like we were ungrateful or greedy. I just know that registering can be overwhelming, and I read someone's blog with her tips for registering that were helpful. So I thought it might be worth sharing what I learned.

1. Use the thank-you card managers

This saved my life when it came to thank-you notes. Except for a few late gifts, I had all of my thank-you notes completed before the end of June. The online registries for the places we registered — Macy's, Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel — had thank-you card managers. This told you not only what was bought but who bought it. I understand the desire to be surprised when gifts arrive at your door, but I was able to stay ahead on thank-you notes by checking this daily. I wrote the thank-you notes when I saw them pop-up there, but waited until I actually received the gift before mailing the card. I only made one mistake but caught it before mailing. I still had a lot to write once we got back from our honeymoon, but I'd say I got through at least half of the thank-you notes before the wedding.

2. Be careful of stores that constantly change inventory

I'm convinced I picked out wineglasses from Crate and Barrel three times. I repeatedly received emails saying items I had registered for at Crate and Barrel had been discontinued. So I was constantly picking out new items that I hadn't ever seen. It got pretty frustrating, and I actually dropped some things off that registry and added them on Macy's, where I rarely had discontinued items.

3. Department stores are the way to go

Macy's was definitely our best registry. The store runs good sales, and their inventory stays pretty consistent. Because we were registering for brands sold elsewhere (Lenox, Waterford, Calphalon), people used their favorite store to get us every day china, fine china or cookware. Macy's also gave us 20 percent off anything in the home store and had a rewards program built into the registry. So I'm able to get a really good deal finishing out some stuff as I use up gift cards.

4. Register at that store in your hometown where everyone goes for wedding gifts

This was my biggest mistake. There is one locally owned store in my hometown that sells jewelry, fine china, etc. Everyone in my hometown that gets married registers there. The store even puts your china patterns out on display in the months before your wedding. But I wasn't in town at good times to go in to register, and I just didn't think it was that big of a deal. Enough people came in asking about my registry that they called my mom. She sent them my patterns (the store also carried them), and we got a lot of our fine china from people going there. But since I hadn't registered, the woman dealing with most of it didn't have my information, and there ended up being a lot of phone calls and back and forth that I might have bypassed if I had gone in there and registered from the beginning. So if you have store like that in your hometown, I recommend finding a way to register there — it could save you a lot of hassle later.

Cooking for two

A post about cooking on a cooking blog! Shocking considering how long it has been.

I'm learning a few things about cooking for two and cooking for a guy.

While we were dating and engaged, J and I ate out a ton. I cooked occasionally for both of us and put together some single-girl meals when we didn't have plans, but I didn't do much cooking in the last year. But I missed cooking, and I'm enjoying trying some new recipes and taking advantage of fresh vegetables.

Since we don't live just down the street from the grocery store, I have to think ahead and shop for the week. My goal is to cook dinner three weeknights — Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday — and have an option for the weekend. We have small group at church on Thursdays, so we stay in town and eat before going there.

What I'm noticing is that I rarely end up with leftovers. I might get one lunch out of a dinner, but generally, a meal that might feed me for three or four days is gone in one night. For someone who hates leftovers, this is mostly a good thing, and I'm glad that J likes my cooking. But it is nice to at least have lunch the next days, so I'm still figuring how much to make.

I've been trying some new recipes from Pinterest and keeping some of my standbys in the rotation. Here are some of our favorites from Pinterest:

Skinny Mediterranean Pasta Toss — This is by no means a budget-friendly meal. But it is really good, and J likes it even though it doesn't have meat in it.

Crispy Cheddar Chicken — This is really easy. I skip the sauce, we like the chicken as is. I use two chicken breasts and "everything" Ritz crackers.

Herb crusted chicken with basil cream sauce — The sauce for this is really good. When I used to have leftovers, I put it on pasta the next day.

Macaroni and cheese — I've only made this once, not the healthiest thing. But if you want really good, homemade mac and cheese, this is a good choice. I just wish I had cut the recipe in half. It was not great left over.

Honey garlic balsamic chicken — This is a really easy chicken meal to make, and J said it could be added to the rotation (the sign of a good recipe).

Summer stir fry — This is not your standard stir fry (I am not a fan of stir fry). It is summer vegetables and shrimp cooked in butter and olive oil. Super easy and really good. Even when I think I make more than enough, we devour it.

You'll notice this is a lot of chicken recipes — that is J's favorite. I usually work red meat in through tacos or spaghetti since we don't have a grill for steaks. I'm not a pork fan, but we are probably going to want some variety of meat mixed in. But J is a fan of my favorite vegetarian meals and sides — tomato pie, zucchini pie, roasted asparagus and a new favorite is roasted broccoli. But I'm on the lookout for good chicken recipes if you have some to share or another meat recipe I could work into the mix, please pass along.