Adventures in the Kitchen - BAKING!!!!

I have never been a baker. I do not like baking. I am awful with dough and I hate measuring things out. All my cooking consists of estimating amounts. Gregg, on the other hand, loves working with dough. He makes the dough to make his own pizzas. The dough was usually made in our bread-maker which we got as a wedding present in 2007. In fact, though we made some bread in our bread-maker, it primarily served as a dough-maker. Well, this piece of equipment which has been with us for over 4 years, broke about a month ago. It moved with us from Charlottesville to Farmville to Lancaster to Lititz. After mourning it for about a week, Gregg and I started talking about replacements. I wanted another bread-maker but Gregg suggested a KitchenAid Stand Mixer which we have always wanted but never bought. However, there are a few reasons why we hesitated:

1)      It is expensive.

2)      How much do you need to use it to justify the purchase?

3)      Since we only make doughs for pizza, it does not seem worth the money.

However, we saw one on a huge sale at Kohl’s and bought it anyway. We bought the black 4.5 quart artisan one and saved over a $100 on its actual price. Then, against Gregg’s inclination, I bought a very cheap loaf pan. Now all I can say is: how did we ever live without this gadget?

In the last month, Gregg has made 3-4 pizza doughs, I have made 4 loaves of white bread and 2 of banana bread. The bread from the bread maker was definitely inferior to store-bought while the bread made from the KitchenAid recipe book is definitely superior. This loaf comes out evenly shaped and baked and is great for making sandwiches. I also made banana bread for the first time – this recipe is from epicurious and I really like it. It is not too banana-y. We also made a gingerbread cake from scratch – I say “we” because it was Gregg’s idea and he did most of the work. It is absolutely amazing. It uses both fresh and ground ginger which gives it a bite which ground ginger alone does not. However, the beer and the brown sugar balance the ginger wonderfully well. This recipe is from Cook’s Illustrated. Gingerbread cookies are next on the fall baking list.

My next venture will be pie crusts and pastry – since I need them to make home-made samosas and apple pies. I usually buy them from the store but I want to stop that. We have a cheap $20 pasta maker and Gregg has been making the pasta dough in the mixer too. I must say, in spite of the costly nature of this purchase, I think we may end up saving money in the long run. Bread, pasta and pizzas as well as pie crusts are expensive at the store.     

One of these days, I want to list my favorite kitchen gadgets. But this one will definitely be one of them. I am so excited. I have always loved the smell of a house with fresh baked bread, cake etc and I want it to be one of Asha’s memories too. Love love love this purchase.

Artsy Craftsy Projects for Artsy Craftsy Dummies

I am TERRIBLE at anything arty. Seriously, I could not draw a stick figure. Asha can draw better now than I can – and she cannot hold a pencil properly. This has never really bothered me. I do not like artsy-craftsy projects. I do not even like decorating my house. However, since Asha has been born, this has bothered me. I have not even made a baby book for Asha yet.

Then I decided to use Shutterfly. I love that site. It allows me to use our pictures of Asha to create all sorts of things which look beautiful. So far I have made one birthday card with it, invitations to Asha’s first birthday and am working on making three different calendars for 2012. The calendars are the biggest project I have undertaken – all three use different photos and layouts.  It is taking me hours to collect all the photos I need, upload them and organize and arrange them. However, they look awesome on my computer. I am also planning to make her a photo book for her with people she should be able to identify. She loves pictures, so the picture book would be a present for her.

I also discovered that there are websites that allow you to custom make family cookbooks. This is something I plan to work on in the future – I think it would be a very cook project.

These websites are made for people like me – people who are not artistic and yet, want to commemorate occasions and events. People who do not scrapbook but would like to do so with the least amount of fuss. These projects require time and trouble but they do not require expertise. I love these websites and the end products I have received thus far are great.

Separation Anxiety

When I went back to work 6 weeks after Asha was born, I was relieved!!! This was the first time in 6 weeks that I had taken a shower before 7pm, the first time in 6 weeks that I got into a quiet car and turned on my own music, the first time in 6 weeks that I was getting adult interaction during the day. You get the picture!!!! Of course it helped that this was also the last week of classes, the next week was exam week and then I would get another 4 weeks at home with her.

When I went back to work 4 weeks later, I felt much worse. This would be a whole semester and I would leave her home every day. By this point she was about 2.5 months old and over the worst of her colic. She was starting to smile and focus on us more and it was much more difficult leaving her. I thought about her all the time I was at school and called about 5-6 times during the day to check on her. Gregg was just starting to get irritated when my parents arrived and they were only too happy to fill me in on all her gestures, sounds, bowel movements etc. every time I called. Shortly after they left, school was done for the semester and I did not have to irritate Gregg for long.

The last few nights have been very difficult for us. We phased out Asha’s middle of the night bottle because it was clear she did not need it. She was drinking a maximum of 4oz at night and then spent another 45 minutes pulling our hair, smiling, examining our teeth etc. She just wanted to play. She has not had a night bottle in the last 4 nights and while she still wakes at least twice, she has stayed up only 15-30 minutes each time. However, I find myself waking up at 4am and unable to go back to sleep. This is very bad because we go to bed around 11pm, we get up with her twice and so waking and staying awake at 4am means I get almost no sleep. I wondered why this kept happening even when I was exhausted. Then it occurred to me – this is separation anxiety. I do not want to leave Asha home on Monday. She is now 10 months. She is crawling, standing, saying mama. She loves me to sit on the floor so she can crawl over me and around me to grab toys I hide. She loves playing hide-and-seek. She loves grabbing my leg, pulling herself up and hanging on while I take mini-steps. She is making new sounds all the time – testing different inflections with the same word. I will miss all this while I am at work.

I have never even considered being a stay-at-home mom (and not just for financial reasons). I love my job and love adult company and interaction. But now I know why they make this decision. I do not want to miss her milestones. I miss her company. It is getting more difficult to leave her as she grows because I love her company and her personality. Oh well!!! I am trying to console myself with the thought that when she reaches an age when she will not want my company, I will feel glad I kept my job!!!!     

New Year is Here!!!!

While most people see January 1st as New Year’s Day, any teacher’s New Year is the first day of the fall semester. New Year has always been bittersweet for me. It lacks the unreflective delight with which I treat Thanksgiving. The New Year always makes me look back as much as forward – assessing the past year, its successes and failures and all that I did not accomplish or did accomplish. I have the same attitude to the new school year. I usually become aware of it through an increasingly tight knot in my stomach. This knot first manifests itself around the beginning of August and makes its way from my stomach to my throat by the back of my throat. It is the stress of the new school year – easing back into a life flooded with emails, grading, teaching, committees, etc. It is the thought of the time you squandered during the summer. I taught summer school this year and started a syllabus for a new course. However, the syllabus is incomplete and I have to finish it and submit it during the first couple of weeks of the semester. Even the small things seem insurmountable – for instance, I need to sew buttons and hems on a number of my skirts and shirts and I need it done before the end of next week. I had all summer to do it but….here we are.

In today’s world, teaching is not a 9am-5pm job. Students email you at all hours of the day and expect a response accordingly. Activities have to be held after school. Most importantly, any and all research has to be done after school. Increasing class sizes do not help. This semester, I have some 175 students in my classes total. That is a lot of grading (no TAs or RAs). Teaching political theory makes it worse because you cannot have multiple choice exams in that subject. Grading 175 papers and 175 essays 3 times in the semester takes up an enormous amount of time. Everything is increasing – students, advisees, grading, committee work etc. Yet, without the research, all these things become boring, mundane and outdated. To be frank, the time to do research is so limited during the semester. Whoever thinks that teachers work part-time for 9 months out of the year never taught a day in their life.
The academic New Year is here and I am going to make a few resolutions here (publicly) in the hopes it will help me to keep them. Some of these I am really good at, others not so much. So here goes:

1. Answer all emails within a 24-hour period
2. Complete all grading within 2 weeks of receiving the exams
3. Get the syllabus for a new class completed and turned in by the end of September
4. Read 5 dystopias for my dystopia project
5. Use fall break for making quizzes for each class and uploading them online

If anyone has any other new year suggestions/resolutions they make for the academic year, please feel free to share. How do you feel about the start of the academic year?

Balance

Being a teacher, I wonder if anyone has ever heard those comments: “Oh, you only work 9 months out of the year.” Or, “you only teach 3-4 hours per day? What do you do the rest of the time?” “You are so lucky to get 3 months off during the summer.” I mean, haven’t the Republicans been saying that the crazy debt we are in is because of teachers unions who extract a lot more money and benefits than is necessary for a job where we stop working at 2-3pm and get 3 months of “vacation”? This is the perception of my profession. This always drives me crazy.

There are two types of exhaustion – physical and mental. I always find myself mentally exhausted at the end of 3 continuous hours of teaching. (Physically exhausted too but that is only because I pace through all 3 hours of class). Anyone who has taught a class knows that a teacher cannot space out mentally for even one minute. That is the minute when someone says or does something stupid. Three hours of total focus is mentally exhausting. At the end of a day like that, I can spend time with Asha and she actually proves to be relaxing. She is physically exhausting to be around but not mentally exhausting (unless she is having a cranky spell which are, thankfully, infrequent).

Problem is that this summer I have spent each second around Asha. She is physically exhausting but not mentally so. However, I get no “mind work” when I am around her. She has learnt to stand and so if my laptop is on, she spends all her time slapping it, pressing random keys and deleting it. If I try to read, she grabs the book and crumples the pages. I do not watch TV around her. So, it can mean hours of grabbing objects and naming them (“ball”, “dog”, “table”) and reading baby board books. At the end of a whole day of this, I am happy to read some fiction and fall into bed. But then I spend all night making lists of things I have to do – syllabi, school prep etc.

I prefer mental exhaustion (without physical exhaustion) to the other way round. At least I feel productive. After watching Asha, I should feel productive and like a good mom, but I do not. I feel like I should not spend time thinking of the other things on my to-do list. I feel I should get more done. I am neither concentrating on her nor on my work. UGGGGHHHHH!!!! Balance is so difficult.

This brings me back to my irritation at those who think of teaching as a 9-month profession. It is not!!! I get paid to work over the summer. Research, proposing a new course to submit to the department, summer teaching, prepping a new course and committee work. This has to be done over the summer. And I have done none of it. During the school year, it is not merely teaching and office hours. We also have committee work, grading, answering interminable (and often inexplicable) emails, research, advising etc etc. The budget crisis is making things worse. Class sizes are larger (I have over 175 students next semester and equivalent grading), the number of advisees keep increasing, the number of committees keep increasing and research time and conference time and money keep decreasing. I guess we are just lucky to have jobs at all. But in two weeks, school starts again. I will have all the mental exhaustion I need then. And I will miss Asha like crazy. It will be more difficult leaving her at home now since she has started crawling, standing and saying mama and baba in the last few months. If I lack balance now, how will I achieve balance then?

This is the problem – everyone has to balance all aspects of their lives. Some are better at it than others. I am not good at it. I either do one thing or another. I am a multi-tasker but find myself unable to do that with Asha. I want to be a good teacher, a good academic, a good mom, a good wife and have some free time to be a well-rounded person. I am coming to the conclusion that this is impossible with a 9-month-old. Maybe it makes sense to wait till she is a little older to impose these expectations on myself. I like balance. I like routine. I like checking things off my to-do list. Asha, unfortunately, does not like any of these things. Oh well. How do other moms balance?

Asha at 9 months

Asha turned 9 months last week. Where did the time go? I still feel like she was just born and here she is, 3 months away from being a toddler. I have not posted much this month and you will know why on reading this one. In one word, it is due to sleep. Or lack thereof. But more on that later.

Motor Skills

Asha’s motor skills continue to develop rapidly. She now stands almost all the time and has started cruising, walking while holding on to furniture (or your legs). She no longer abruptly lets go and falls to the floor. She deliberately lowers herself to the ground. In the last couple of days, she has managed to let go of furniture and stand by herself for a couple of seconds. However, the second she is aware of it, she collapses to the ground. Just a couple of weeks ago, she started to crawl up the stairs. She can crawl up the first two steps but then gets stuck. She is able to pick pasta and cheerios now but rarely eats them. She brings it to her mouth, licks it and chucks them on the floor.

Verbal Skills and Comprehension

Though she has been saying mama all day, every day, for the last couple of days, I do not think she knows what it means. She says it to me, Gregg, Giggs or her bottle. This may be a phase like last time, when she said nothing but mama and baba for a few days and then stopped for weeks. Now she is back to it. She still prefers expressing herself through yells and screams and oooohs and aaaahs.

However, she has started understanding more words I think. She has a dog called Violet (that is what LeapFrog calls it, not my name choice). Two days ago, she was screaming for my laptop, so to distract her, I asked, “Where is Violet?” To my surprise, she looked at Violet. I have repeated it since and she clearly knows Violet, mommy, daddy, Giggs, milk and “up”. We have been working on “no” and she clearly understands it. However, getting her to obey is another matter. She will stop what she is doing for a second, then resume it. I think “no” is going to be my most-uttered word for the next few years.

Sleep

So, I most definitely jinxed myself after saying she was sleeping OK in my last post. I should have known better. She started waking up twice a night soon after and then we took a trip to CT to see Gregg’s parents. Since we have been back (almost 2 weeks now), she has gotten up at least twice a night. The first time, she usually stays up about 45 minutes and the second time about 30 minutes. But for the past two nights, she has been waking every 2 hours like clockwork. It has been exhausting. Yet, she is not teething or sick or anything. I hope she stops soon. I had hoped she would be sleeping through the night by the end of summer, so that the fall semester would be a little easier but no such luck!!! If anyone has any suggestions, I would be glad for them. I have tried everything I (and anyone else) could think of but to no avail.

Naps are soooo short!!! She takes a 30-minute nap in the morning and max. an hour in the afternoon. She wakes at 6am and goes to bed at 9pm – and on a good night, wakes up twice for at least 30 minutes each. It has been increasingly more difficult to get anything done these days since she is awake most of the time and refuses to play by herself for more than 10 minutes at a time.

Play

Her play has certainly gotten more complex. She still likes tearing up papers but she also likes to manipulate things. She is getting more fond of Violet but other than that, she is not yet a doll person. She loves playing with trucks and cars and anything that lights up and makes sounds. We just bought her some boats to float in her bathtub. They are stackable and she adores them. The funny thing about the paper play is this: she tears them up into tiny pieces and then tries to chew on them. If they go into her mouth, she screws up her face to show how much she hates the taste. Here is the thing: when I give her pieces of pasta or cheerios, she plays with them, tears them up and rarely puts them in her mouth. If she does, she screws up her face in the exact same expression and then spits them out. She NEVER spits out the papers. I have to take them out of her mouth. Why doesn’t it occur to her to spit out the inedible papers but she spits out the edible pasta????

Her other favorite play is my favorite: books. If you give her a board book (where she cannot tear out the pages), she will stay in her crib and turn the pages for about 5-10 minutes at a time. Sometimes the book is turned upside down but still, this is my favorite of all her play.

Food

Finger foods have been a disaster. She throws everything I have given her onto the floor. To be fair, things have been a little better recently. When I first gave her finger foods (pasta, bananas, teething biscuits, baby cheerios etc), she did not put a single thing in her mouth. In the past two weeks, she has been putting it in her mouth and spitting it out. Today, she ate about half a piece of pasta and no cheerios. So maybe we are making progress.

Asha HATES her high chair. I think it is because she dislikes being strapped into the chair – she likes movement and restraint is irksome to her. Yogurt is her morning snack and she loves it. She does not dislike cheese. The turkey did not help her sleep through the night though. But I cook it with onions, peppers, cheese, thyme and rosemary. Pretty much everything but salt. Of course, then I puree it. For vegetables, I have been giving her everything from peppers, mushrooms, cauliflower, broccoli, anything we eat. I do not want to end up with a kid who refuses to eat anything but mac and cheese. She is a picky eater and I do not want her to think that she can whine her way to eating anything she wants.

Personality

Wow, she is determined/stubborn happy little person. Once she wants anything, she leaves no question in your mind about what it is and it is extremely hard to distract her. As a rule, she is happy. I love her morning smiles and whenever I lift her out of her crib. She is very good in public places – she does not cry when strangers talk to her but mostly stares and hides her head in our shoulders. It is very easy to take her to restaurants and malls and grocery shopping.

Driving to CT with her was a disaster. She screamed and yelled the whole 5 hour ride. This was very unusual for her (she usually sleeps in the car) but again, I think it has to do with being strapped in. So, on the way back, we left CT at 9pm and arrived home at 2am. This time she slept the whole time. We are planning a one-day trip to VA with her to visit some relatives – we will see how it goes!!!

Asha has started giving kisses sometimes. But she must have learnt kissing from Giggs and not from us. It is more like licking than kissing. She opens her mouth as wide as possible and puts it on our faces. Then she sometimes closes it – thereby licking every part of our face.

We stopped watching TV around her except for 30 minutes of sports at night (Gregg) and some news (due to the debt crisis). We did this because she was clearly in love with John Stewart. Any time she saw The Daily Show, she would put a finger in her mouth and laugh while staring at the TV. Colbert did not have the same effect. So, we stopped watching all TV around her (including both Stewart and Colbert).

Other than the sleep issue, the past month has been a lot of fun. In a later post, I want to cover our CT trip where Gregg and I got to watch Harry Potter and spend some time by ourselves. I have so many thoughts on that trip – and on Harry Potter. But that is for another day.

Cleaning

This mundane topic has been a source of discord in our house for some time now. Gregg and I are not cleaning-oriented. Yes, we square away (sometimes) and make the bed. We always do the dishes and Gregg does all the laundry. But vacuuming, dusting and hard core cleaning has always been a chore we both tend to avoid. It used to get done more regularly BC (before child) but has been done less and less since. Gregg mows the lawn and does all the yardwork generally and the laundry. We both do the dishes (we have a dishwasher). I cook, square away, clean the kitchen, pay bills, make beds etc. I probably do more of the childcare but Gregg watches her when I am not home and sometimes when I am. Neither one of us cleans or wants to. The difference is that, while Gregg frets about it and complains about it, I let it go. My attitude tends to be: “I will do it just as soon as I am done doing the other million things I have to do.” Gregg complains that this is unhealthy, unsanitary (just to be clear, our house does not look like a pigsty) and sets a bad example for Asha. We have to “find time” according to him.

But if there is a secret to this, I would love to know it. How can a person (or two) hold down a full-time job, take care of a baby with zero help, do basic upkeep of a house, cook and clean? Either I am very lazy or others are super productive. But we have to do something. I have started vacuuming one room every morning after Asha wakes up but this sets her off and she screams and yells at the loud noise of the vacuum cleaner and at being left to herself. Currently, I am reading a book on feminist (she objected to that characterization) Charlotte Perkins Gilman (of “The Yellow Wallpaper” fame) and starting to like her idea of state-aided housework. Not the cooking (I like that part) but the cleaning.

Seriously, any ideas on how to balance cleaning against everything else? What cleaning is essential on a daily basis and what is not? How often do you clean the house from top to bottom?