Last night was another one of those nights when Baguette woke up at 2 a.m. or so and didn’t really go back to sleep. I brought her out to the couch and we snuggled; she eventually did fall back asleep. But since I needed to get up, I packed pillows around her so she wouldn’t fall out.
So this is Baby’s First Pillow Fort, and she doesn’t even know it.
For why we have them, take a look at the first post in this series.
A little while ago Mrs. Sandwich posted about things she found in the closet, and the earthquake kits came up (along with a bunch of other jumbled stuff). She asked if I wanted to do a guest post describing the kits, and here we are, although in truth this is gonna take more than one post, but here goes:
Stashed under the bed I have a canvas tote bag, handed out free by some conference that took place on campus. In that, there are:
I figured that in the event of another dead-of-night earthquake I can grab that bag and at the very least have clothes and shoes to get me outside the house after the shaking has stopped.
The earthquake kits in the closet were put together starting at a point in my life when I was doing some regular backpacking. Since back-country backpacking involved carrying with you all the stuff you need to survive in the wild for a while, a loaded backpack in the closet seemed like the most reasonable vehicle to have all the necessities of life packed and ready to go post-temblor. I picked up a Lowe-Alpine Australis on clearance sale at REI, and it is stuffed with the following:
I know, I know, most of you read that last item and were like “WTF? Gas Mask?” Please bear in mind that some of the items in this Earthquake/Emergency kit were included in the dizzy paranoia that was in the air immediately post 9/11. I was glued to the TV and Rumsfeld or somebody was on there talking about Anthrax and Bio-terror and getting duct tape and trashbags to seal ourselves in from dirty bomb fallout or Rycin or Mustard Gas or some damn thing and I was like “Screw this noise! I’m getting a gas mask! eBay here I come!” I was newly dating Mrs. Sandwich at the time, and we were at that point where she was asking me if it was too forward of her to leave a hair dryer with me rather than have to travel across the country with one in her luggage and my response was “I’m hope I’m not being too forward, but I bought you a gas mask.” I figured when Al-Qaida attacked we could don our gas masks and stare longingly through the little glass eyepieces at each other in my trash bagged and duct-taped apartment while we made Darth-Vader breath sounds at each other. If you close your eyes you can just feel the romance…
Anyway, so that’s why there’s a gas mask in the earthquake kit. And in Mrs. Sandwich’s too. Speaking of which…
When we were first married we lived in a crappy apartment in Palms (one of the less affluent neighborhoods in West L.A.) and I would go jogging in a 5 mile loop that circled some of the adjacent, more affluent places in West L.A. I basically went up Overland, across Pico, down Motor and back across Palms Blvd. Anyway, while jogging one day I ran past a house and saw that someone had crammed into their trash can a Lowe Alpine 70×15 Women’s internal-framed backpack along with a 4 man tent, and I was like “Score!!” Side note: some of the neighborhoods in West Los Angeles have a definition of ‘trash’ that most people on this planet would not even come close to recognizing. I mean, one time I was running down Motor and I saw someone had tossed out on the curb two fully functional looms. Looms! With thread and those little shuttle thingies and bobbins and whatnot and my first impulse was to call my sister who does costuming and Comic-Con and asked “Hey, do you or your fiends want to make your own cloth for Renn-Faire, because there’s two looms sitting out on the curb on Overland!” She didn’t. But still, two whole looms, just sitting there . . . looming.
Anyway, so I grab the backpack and tent, dragged those home, and after running them through the wash to get a rather insignificant amount of dog hair off it Mrs. Sandwich has her own earthquake kit. Its contents consist of:
Ok so that’s it. Theoretically if we make it through the initial P, S and T waves we will have enough supplies to get us up out of bed, outside onto the front lawn and away from power lines and safely hunkered down until the shaking stops. But see, that’s not all, because remember that Rubbermaid tub that was the first earthquake kit? That’s still around, and if we make it out of the house and I have enough time to swing by the spare bedroom, in THAT closet there’s the Rubbermaid tub which has a whole OTHER set of emergency supplies for me, Mrs. Sandwich and Baguette to…Oh Holy Poop! I forgot about our daughter! I gotta go!
…OK, I’m back. So now I went through Oma’s box of clothes she found at the thrift shops but are too big for Baguette and I have added them to Mrs. Sandwich’s earthquake kit. They are:
One oversized fleece sleeper. I figure I can cut the feet off it if need be and she has little baby fleecy overalls.
There. Now at least our daughter won’t have to wander the Post-Tectonic Wasteland in her Monkey Ballerina Jammy Jams. Oh damnit! I forgot about her shoes! I gotta go! More later!
For those of you who asked about our earthquake kits, here is the first in a series of guest posts by Mr. Sandwich, our family’s Emergency Management Coordinator.
What I remember about that morning of January 17th was the sound of the cats running into the bedroom and fighting each other to get under the futon. I can’t specifically remember if the shaking came first, I just remember the rumble of not-so-gentle cats’ feet tear-assing into the bedroom from their living room perches, but by the time they were safely ensconced, the shaking was really going.
I remember the shutters slapping open and shut and I remember the water in the swimming pool sloshing over the edges and making little waves against the wall of my apartment. But what I remember most about that morning, even more than the pre-dawn darkness or how you could see the stars in the L.A. sky when all the power to the streetlights went out, was groping around for clothes in the dark. L.A. had just experienced its biggest earthquake in a generation and I couldn’t find my underwear.
As it turned out, I weathered the Northridge Quake with essentially no damage. There was the typical open-cupboards-kitchen disaster and some toppled bookshelves, but for the most part I didn’t suffer at all, certainly not like so many did. We had enough water to last through the ‘boil your tap water’ warning period, (hell, we had water pressure period) my apartment building wasn’t red or even yellow-tagged and like most buildings in Westwood, you could hardly tell anything had happened. Now, the Santa Monica Freeway had collapsed and Royce Hall at UCLA weebled and wobbled but didn’t QUITE fall down, but none of that touched me in any serious way.
Except that it scared the living bejeesus out of me.
Once the shaking settled down, I became focused on having an honest- to-God earthquake kit at the ready so I wouldn’t be caught with my pants down again, literally or figuratively. The kit began as a Rubbermaid tub with various items in it and has evolved over the years into a fairly extensive emergency kit ‘system’ with different levels of accessibility, extensiveness and portability. But no matter which form it takes, the ‘kit’ really serves as a security blanket, a threadbare attempt to soothe my ever-present anxiety.
For those of you who are not Southlandians, a little Earth Science background: The Pacific Tectonic Plate is sliding past the North American Plate at roughly the same speed that fingernails grow. They putter and hop and skip constantly in the form of relatively small earthquakes but every once in a while those two little geologic bosom buddies do a Texas two-step that shakes the snot right out of everything for a hundred mile radius in a little periodic temblor Angelenos like to refer to as ‘The Big One.’ The Big One is coming–not if, but when–everyone agrees on that.
Yet we all pretty much blithely go about our lives, the same way I guess Appalachian miners dig for coal with the impending threat of collapse and cave-in, or ancient sailors sailed the seas with the knowledge that a storm could appear without warning with enough force to erase any evidence they ever existed, and yet still they sailed on.
When the Big One comes it has the potential to be bigger than Northridge, Katrina, Superstorm Sandy and God knows what else combined and unlike hurricanes, there’s basically no forewarning. You’re just gonna hear cats fighting to get under your futon.
So, faced with the ever-present threat of ground shaki-ness I have adopted an attitude of somewhat obsessive preparedness to alleviate my fears. I do this with the same fervor of a sports fan who wears his lucky shirt while watching from the couch during playoffs, or has other bizarre ritual to guarantee local sports team success, all in the hopes that my diligence will forestall or somehow mitigate the movement of the earth’s crust. I guess the two behaviors have about an equal chance of success.
Wondering how those kits developed and what’s in them now? Tune in tomorrow, same Bat-time (well, maybe not), same Bat-channel.
Yesterday Baguette started taking swim classes again, and then we had lunch at Carl’s Jr. with Bestie and her family, in what has become something of a Saturday tradition. (It used to be McDonald’s, but we all got tired of McDonald’s, and their “we’re a coffee house” rebranding means that they don’t have booths, which we really need to corral two bubbly little girls, and for crying out loud, why don’t fast food places have changing stations?)
After we eat, we go outside to the tiny strip of grass behind the parking lot and let the girls run around. They have a playdate, energy gets burned off, and then we go our separate ways for naptime.
Baguette is nap-resistant (as I may have mentioned), and yesterday she only slept for an hour before coming out to the living room. But it turned out that the pool and the playing really had worn her out, and she fell back asleep with us–and stayed that way for almost another two hours.
That meant that I spent Saturday afternoon with my daughter snuggled up against me under a blanket and the dog in her bed next to us, while Mr. Sandwich and I stretched out from opposite ends of the couch and watched several–several!–back episodes of Cougar Town.
Later on, there was a massive meltdown (purple snow pants were both essential and intolerable). But that doesn’t take away from the fact that when all of us were cosy and curled up together as a family, I had everything I’ve ever wanted in life. all in one place, all at the same time. It was the best, most magical Saturday afternoon I’ve ever had.
This morning Baguette wanted to ride her tricycle, and let me tell you, helping a little girl in robot pajamas and pink owl rainboots steer around the block on a Radio Flyer trike? Makes for a pretty good Sunday morning, too.
Photo by mollypop, via Flickr. Creative Commons.
So one of the blogs I follow is titled Sleeping Should Be Easy. And you’d think, wouldn’t you?
But apparently not.
As I’ve written, Baguette is not a fan of sleep. She is a master at finding ways to keep herself awake, even when she’s clearly exhausted. And then there are nights when she does a decent job of going to sleep, but for some reason wakes up–awake!–at 2 or 3 in the morning.
Last night was one of those nights.
Baguette kept punching and climbing on Mr. Sandwich in her sleep, so I kept pulling her back to me and holding her. Eventually, I think she settled down.
Then, at about 2, she woke up and wanted to talk. I tried hushing her, and she’d settle down, and then she’d rev back up. So, finally, I said, “Do you want to go in the living room with Mommy?”
She said, “Yes!” slid off the bed, ordered, “Come on, Wicket!” (the dog’s bed is in the corner) and waited for me to get up.
Thankfully, she didn’t want to watch TV. No, she wanted to lie down on the couch and snuggle with me under a blanket.
Yes, that is exactly what we’d been doing in bed. Where it was warmer.
Wicket, meanwhile, came out but did not want to stay in her other bed, which sits just above the couch. (Mr. Sandwich built a platform for it, it doesn’t just hover there–although that would be cool.) No, she wanted to come down and sleep on the same couch cushion that Baguette and I were using for a pillow.
This is why we don’t let the dog on the bed.
I’m so happy to have another guest post at The Happiest Mom, again focusing on what I’ve learned as a new(ish) mother:
Time is of the essence. Tempus fugit. One thing’s for sure–time is not on my side.
Before Baguette was born, I heard horror stories about how long it could take to get a baby out of the house. I checked and re-checked her diaper bag half a dozen times in the days before we wound up going to the hospital for her birth. I was prepared.
And as it turned out, most of the time, getting out of the house wasn’t so bad, as long as I gave myself a little bit of prep time. (Mind you, there were plenty of times we turned around at the door to change a diaper one more time before leaving.)
Even once I went back to work, I developed routines that helped me stay on track. Over the weekend, I set out Baguette’s clothes for the next day. I try to cook at least one big meal so that there are some leftovers as the week progresses. I get her bag and mine ready the night before.
But that’s the routine. I can do routine. Variations? That’s a whole different story.
To read the rest of the story, visit The Happiest Mom.
Photo by wwarby, via Flickr. Creative Commons.
I’m starting to think that Miranda Priestly may have actually been a toddler. How can I support this theory? Baguette’s meltdowns have increased in frequency over the past few days. While I can’t always understand what she’s trying to tell us, here’s what seems to be the gist of it:
Photo by DebMomOf3, via Flickr. Creative Commons.
As we were heading out today, one of our neighbors walked by. We said we were going to the park, and she said, “Is it a nice park?”
I honestly didn’t know how to answer that.
We’re lucky enough to live near quite a few parks with playground areas–although lately Baguette has been more excited about running around on the grass than in the swings and slides. But, hey, whatever burns off that nap-resistant energy.
We wound up at one that has tennis courts, but not a duck pond. What did Baguette want to do most? Go beach! Err, play in the sand. You know, that thing that’s so concerning to her teachers. So we let her do just that. For over an hour.
My take on the park? It had a playground and lots of grass. And nobody stabbed us. So, sure, it was a nice park.
As I get back into cooking, I’m struck by what tools make the process easy for me. Here are a few things I’ve been relying on lately.
Slow-cooker
I use this at least once a week. While I can’t count on having time to prepare a multi-course meal, I can usually find time to put ingredients into the slow-cooker and walk away. On Sundays I’ll make a batch of steel-cut oats with almond milk, although the fruits vary from week to week. I take this to work, reheat, and add walnuts for an easy, affordable, healthy breakfast. The one thing I’d change? My slow-cooker doesn’t have a timer function.
Electric kettle
I grew up with stovetop whistling tea kettles, and kept using them for most of my adult life (so far). But a few years ago I got a countertop electric kettle, and I like it so much better. It heats up faster and doesn’t take up a burner on the stove.
Blender
I don’t use this a lot–but Mr. Sandwich doesn’t care for chunky tomatoes, so the blender ensures that sauces are smooth. I also like the immersion blender my brother and sister-in-law gave me a few years ago; while I started using it to make Baguette’s baby food, it’s terrific for blended soups. It doesn’t fill all needs–I could probably use a Cuisinart, but right now I’m not sure where I’d store it in between uses. I’ll get one when I figure that out.
Trader Joe’s Pop-Up Sponges
Cleaning up is part of the cooking process, after all. They last better than mass-market sponges and take longer to get smelly, and they just feel better in my hand. I started buying this type of sponge from Williams-Sonoma, but the ones at Trader Joe’s are much, much cheaper. And apparently they’re compostable, too.
What about you? What are your favorite kitchen appliances and tools?
I feel like this week has gone on for about a year.
Monday was a holiday, and so being us, we went snowshoeing. Baguette loves the snow, but we dramatically underestimated how quickly a not-quite-three-year-old can get wet and cold.
Tuesday we went back to work, and Baguette went back to school. Honestly, I don’t really remember Tuesday.
Wednesday we had Baguette’s in-network evaluation for speech therapy. More on that in another post; for this one, let’s just say that the appointment started late and ran longer than we expected; Baguette missed snack time and got very grouchy; she napped for a grand total of 25 minutes; and at the end of the day we had a conference with one of her teachers. More on that in another post, too.
Thursday was crazy busy, and also rainy. That meant that Baguette got to wear her raincoat and boots. It also meant that she wanted her umbrella, which I did not have time to find. In the evening she ate and ate and ate.
This morning I dropped her off at day care, narrowly avoiding an umbrella-related meltdown, and one of her teachers referred to “the breakfast she doesn’t eat any of.” Which explains the evening hunger. And then work was crazy busy again, with much soothing of ruffled feathers in some directions and prodding in others.
So now we’re home, and while a hat-stacking-related meltdown led Baguette to declare her interest in “go bed,” we are back up. There has been playing with “A-B-C Puzzle” and her new dump truck–it arrived today, and I realized that I order so many things from Amazon that everyday is Christmas. At the moment we’re winding down (I hope) with Sesame Street, and if we’re really lucky, she’ll actually go to sleep and let us watch a sitcom. Ha!
So I leave you with this:
