The wagon pushed me off!

So, I didn't make it to the yoga workshop this weekend. I caught some kind of stomach bug, and could hardly get off the couch all of Friday and most of Saturday. Today I felt much better, but weak and depleted so there was no way I could go. I spoke with a friend last night who also had a situation beyond her control preventing her from doing her yoga practice. She asked "doesn't it feel like your body is conspiring against you?" Yes, it does.

So, I'm asking, nay, imploring my body to please give me a chance this week. Pretty please? I promise it will be worth it!

Slowly climbing back on the wagon

I have fallen off the yoga wagon. My last yoga post was Jan 2. Over a month and a half ago. True, there have been loads of items of note going on in my mama-life lately (no more diapers, night-weaning, banana eating...), but this is not a good sign for a blog called "Z's Yoga Mama". So what's been going on with my yoga practice? Well, let's take a look. Since New Year's Eve, I've been keeping track of my practice. I've created this handy-dandy chart* to better visualize the trends...

*Please note, the vertical axis on this chart is my best attempt to quantify my yoga practice. I'm aware that this chart is not really mathematically or quantitatively meaningful. 

Hmm... what are all those gaps about? Let me try to make it a little more clear...

To be totally clear, those sick arrows that keep getting bigger include the sickness level of the entire house (not just me). These arrows included fun events such as "Papa's Never-Ending Sore Throat", "Pinkeye Family Tour, 2011" (we were all cured quickly by breastmilk drops in the eyes, but it was still not fun), and "Mama's Dry Nighttime Cough That Woke the World". There were moments when I was actually feeling quite healthy, but would be completely sleep-deprived because Zora was not sleeping well at all, or way too busy keeping the household running because Alex was napping 20 hours a day. And then there's the motivation factor. With all of this going on, and with my yoga practice slowly spiraling down the toilet, it was so very difficult to even drag my tired, aching body onto my yoga mat.

But I really am trying to climb back on the wagon, and get my practice up and running again. Last week I hit another glitch when I started a mastitis episode (probably night-weaning related), but that quickly resolved with some rest and a homeopathic remedy.

This coming weekend, Alex and I will be alternating attendance to a yoga workshop with Richard Freeman (hosted by Troy Lucero), and I'm hoping this will be a spark to light the fire in my practice again.

Ten years is too long to be without you

I'm missing you today and every day. I love you, Dad.

Night Night Bubba Update: The Magic Fruit

This is not entitled "Night Night Bubba (Part 2)", because that title is reserved for the blog post where I talk about all the glorious sleep I'm getting. Our sleep is definitely getting better, but still not where I'd like it to be. Some nights Zora wakes briefly at midnight or 1am, snuggles up next to me and goes back to sleep. She then wakes again around 4 or 5 am and it has become increasingly difficult to get her back to sleep. It can take 1-2 hours!

A few days ago I decided I needed to drop the 4 or 5am nursing session as well, since Zora was no longer going back to sleep easily, and she would just nurse and squirm indefinitely. The first night (or morning, rather), there was lots of crying, but I was able to eventually get her back to sleep after a story, and a banana. I will pause here to mention that Zora has never been a big eater of table foods (breastmilk--yeah), and is definitely not a banana lover (except for our stay in Hawaii where she ate loads of the local bananas). As I was trying to get her back to sleep, she said she was hungry (this child never tells us she's hungry). I thought about it and decided a banana was a good option because there would be no crumbs. I asked her if she wanted one, and she said "yes". She ate the entire thing!

The following night, I left a banana next to the bed so I wouldn't have to get up. She awoke again at 4am, and asked for a banana--I was ready. She gobbled it up, and then spent 10 minutes or so squirming, before she asked for another one. She then proceeded to eat that one too, and soon after fell back asleep.

Needless to say, tonight there are two bananas on our bed-stand, and I'm really hoping that will suffice. 

Wooo-wooo, indeed!

Mushroom Mania

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I'm a complete mushroom slut. I love any and all* mushrooms--the chewy texture, the earthy flavor, the colors, the shapes--all of it! This is another perk of living in the Pacific Northwest (aside from the amazingly green nature we have all around us, the breathtaking mountain and water views and the beautiful, sunny summers... er... well, excluding last summer)--the locally foraged mushrooms! For much of the year, our farmer's market sells a variety of locally foraged mushrooms, and we've tried every single one. I hope to one day take a class and learn how to identify wild mushrooms (hello awesome homeschooling activity for Zora and me!), but for now I'm relying on the professionals. Even though there is no comparing foraged mushrooms to grocery store mushrooms, I will still eat the grocery store ones--and like them!

We now have a new class of mushrooms to add to our list--homegrown mushrooms! A couple weeks ago, we bought an oyster mushroom growing kit at the farmer's market, thinking it would be a fun project for the family. It was--once it got going...

*I actually just ate Lion's Mane Mushrooms a couple of weeks ago, and wasn't too impressed. They were way too wet and had a funny bitter taste. We might have waited too long before we got around to cooking them though, so I will be giving them another try sometime soon and therefore they are not completely off my list.

The Chart: We were to mist the mushrooms three times a day, so I made a big chart with morning, afternoon and evening boxes to X off for each day. This proved to be just as exciting as the mushrooms.

 The Kit: The kit was quite simple to set up. It consisted of a block of wood chips covered in mushroom spores, then wrapped in plastic. All we needed to do was to cut slats in the plastic, stick four chopsticks in the top (this proved to be difficult since I cleared out all our take-out chopsticks a couple months ago, and the only ones we had were kind of nice and we didn't want to use them. Alex eventually stole some from work) to hold up a plastic bag that would act as a "humidity chamber". And then we waited.

Alex explaining the slit-cutting to Zora

Covering the kit with the "humidity chamber"

The Problem: After a week of absolutely nothing, Alex pointed out that, even though the temperature of our house was within the recommended range, our completely un-insulated windows were letting in a draft that was going directly on our mushroom kit.

The Solution: We moved the kit up to the top of the refrigerator, and within one day, there were already adorable little mushroom buds. From there, they took off! There were four openings in the plastic, out of which grew four clusters of mushrooms.  There was definitely a dominant one, and a runt. It was really cool to watch them grow though, and all three of us really got into it!

Day 9: mushroom buds

Day 10, morning...

...and Day 10 evening!

Day 11: Zora's in charge of misting

Day 12: They're growing like crazy!

Day 13: A lesson on gentle touching

Day 13: Close-up

Day 14: Alex decided it was time to harvest

The Harvest: The "runt" cluster consisted mostly of tiny, dried-out mushrooms, and was no longer growing. Alex decided it was time to harvest. All we needed to do was to twist the mushrooms off at the base, and then (hopefully) new ones will grow from the same location.

The first twist

Zora takes a shot at it

Our harvest (well, part of it)!

The Feast: Alex made a delicious stir-fry using the oyster mushrooms and some greens. We gave Zora a little plate of them to enjoy while she was waiting for the rest of lunch to be ready...

Z totally scarfed them, so I'd say it was a success!

We are now working on our next batch of oyster mushrooms. It's another slow start, so perhaps it wasn't because of the draft, after all...
This was an exciting project for the whole family, so I foresee us doing more of this in the future. Next time around we'll try the shiitake mushrooms!

How living with cats prepared me for parenting a human... except for when it didn't

From birth, I have always lived with cats. The most I've ever had was seven (4 adults and 3 kittens), and the fewest was one. I moved out of my mom's house when I was 18, and a few months later adopted Harley. Next came Zecky (in my friend's hamper), and lastly Kaya (left in the night-drop box at the local shelter). Harley was hit by a car when he was just 5 year old :-( , but Zecky and Kaya have stuck with me through two relationships, ten moves (including five cities, three states, two countries, two cross-country trips in moving trucks and three plane trips), one hurricane evacuation and the arrival of one baby. They were there, next to me while I was going through my noisy labor (well, Zecky was sleeping) and they were there when Zora was born (Kaya took off for a day right after the birth, which had me fretting to no end). They are often there when we practice yoga--and Kaya loves to join us for shavasana (we call it chat-vasana--"chat" is "cat" in French). I love cats, but I L.O.V.E. my two kitties. While I was pregnant, they would curl up next to my tummy and purr, which would inevitably make the baby start kicking. Zora loved the kitties even before she was born :-)

Chat-vasana

Kaya was thrilled to find out we were having a baby

As usual, Zecky took a nap

Zecky looking for some attention during my labor

Kaya was the stillest thing in the room during my labor

But, like having a kid, life with the kitties has not always been easy. There are a few lessons I learned from my two furry friends that have come in handy once I was a mother to a human child. Well, to a certain extent...

1. Don't get too attached to material things (like your hair!): Children spill things and break things and get poop on things. I was already more than ready for this when Zora arrived. Most of these "ruining shit that I care about" lessons came from Zecky. He has spilled all kinds of food (he once dove into an over-easy egg I was eating, splattering yolk all over me and the couch--this was pre-vegan Nicole), knocked things down, and has tracked mud over every surface of the house. When Zecky was about two years old, he gave me an unsolicited haircut. This is not a joke. I used to have hair down to my waist, and I would braid it at night. Zecky would often try to chew on the hair-tie, so I would hide my braid under my pillow. One night, I guess I forgot to put my braid under the pillow, and I was sleeping more soundly than usual, and Zecky spent the entire night chewing on my hair. I'm still not joking. I awoke to a pile of hair on my pillow, which totally freaked me out. I looked in the mirror, and saw that Zecky had completely chewed through one third of my braid. He cut off about 12 inches of my hair. My hair is as straight as it comes, so there was no hiding this missing chunk. The only solution was to cut the rest of my hair to the same length. I was pissed. I have since forgiven him, but I still wouldn't trust him with a clump of my hair.

2. Don't get too attached to a full night's sleep: One of the apartments Alex and I rented was on a busy street, so the kitties became indoor cats for one year (we did let them out on the balcony, which led to lesson #3). As anyone who has cats knows, once they get a taste of the outdoors, they can't really go back. Zecky and Kaya both went completely stir crazy in this apartment. Most of this was at night. They would tear around the apartment, crying, all night long. We tried closing them out of our room, but they would just scratch at the door. We tried putting them in the other bedroom, but then we had the sounds of Zecky trying to beat down the door.  Between the cats and the family of twelve that lived downstairs and blasted the TV at all hours, I didn't get much sleep that year. This still didn't quite prepare me for the sleep-deprivation of parenthood.

3.You must fight for your kitties (even if they may be rabid): As mentioned in #2, Zecky and Kaya were indoor cats for one year--except for going on the balcony. We lived on the second story and we rigged it so they couldn't get down, but they could still go out to get some fresh air, to catch some rays... and to catch bats. Alex woke me up in the wee hours of the morning saying "Zecky caught a bat!" Half asleep, I asked where it was. "Flying around in the apartment". I was up. I should stop here, before I make this story too long. Here's the abbreviated version:
Zecky caught a bat. We called animal control to come save the bat dying on our balcony. Animal control lady came, bat was gone, so she asked for Zecky's rabies records. Zecky's shots were 2 weeks overdue. She took Zecky and said he would be put down. I called the guy in charge, cried and pleaded to get our cat back. He finally agreed to a 6-month home quarantine. We moved to New Orleans 3 months into this quarantine.
Ok, that was still kind of long. The cutest part was when Alex was plotting to break into the animal shelter and rescue Zecky. I think he would have done it.
 
4. Kitchen cupboards must be baby-proofed: Zecky can open anything. The doorknobs where we lived in France were latch style, so Zecky learned to jump up and hang from them to open doors. Watching this act would simultaneously dazzle Alex's great-aunt, and annoy his grandmother. When we moved back to the US, he would continue to try to open all doorknobs, even the round ones. Sometimes he would succeed. The kitties didn't have a kitty door in New Orleans, so when Zecky wanted in, he would just hang from the front doorknob until one of us would notice the knob jiggling (the first few times it was kind of scary...), and would let him in. His mad opening skills do not end there though. He also opens kitchen cabinets, and not just the ones at floor level. We actually needed more baby-proofing in the kitchen for our cat than for our human baby.

5. You might get some poop on you: This was a lesson from the dearly departed Harley. Harley was a fighter. One morning, I heard the telltale sounds of a cat fight--hissing, growling that grew louder and louder until it became howling. I ran out the door, just as the other cat was running off (Harley usually dominated!). I picked up Harley to make sure he was ok, and my heart skipped a beat. His tummy was completely covered in a warm, wet substance. I was sure it was blood, or worse, some part of his insides hanging out. I looked at my hand, expecting to see red, but instead saw brown. Yes, his entire tummy was covered in shit. I did a complete 180 degree turn in a microsecond. I went from loving, concerned mother to horrified and disgusted--I dropped Harley, and ran inside, closing the door behind me. I'll never know whose shit it was, but I suspect it belonged to the other cat. As I said, Harley dominated, and I think he literally scared the shit out of the other cat. As if this wasn't bad enough, Harley was back at the door, within 30 minutes, completely poo-free. He didn't get any kisses on his face for a long time...

6. Baby naps are done best together: This last lesson came Kaya. I adopted her when she was just a few weeks old, and I could feel that she still needed lots of physical contact. For the first several weeks, she would nap on my lap, or in the pocket of my hooded sweatshirt (my first experience with "babywearing"). She was able to settle down and sleep peacefully for longer periods. If I set her down to nap, she would just cry. Hmmm... sounds very familiar.

In all seriousness, I know that having a baby is not really like having a cat, but I do love my two kitties to pieces, and I feel so lucky that Zora is growing up with such an awesome pair of feline companions!

Kaya with napping newborn Zora

3-month-old Zora, with napping Zecky