I hold Silas in my arms and feed him his bottle. I sing the same three songs and we pray the Lord’s Prayer. Then I pull him up on my shoulder, rub his back, and rock him.

And the fight begins.

That little voice kicks in and reminds me…

You have laundry to do. You need to wash diapers. The bottles are waiting, and you need to prepare food for tomorrow. Don’t you have papers to grade? When are you going to have time to wash your hair? Have you swept the floor this week?

On and on it goes, tugging at me, pulling at me, that inexorable list of things that always need to be done.

I try to fight it.

I try to remind myself that he will only be this little once. He already does not fit in my arms like he used to, and I can tangibly feel that he is not a little baby anymore. I try to breathe in his scent, close my eyes, and shut out the other voice.

Sometimes I win, and sometimes I am too weak, laying Silas in his crib guiltily as I march onward toward the next task.

He’s only going to be this little once. When will I ever learn?

I received this reminder today. I need more like it.

So I have this “Bucket List of Cooking,” if you will – dishes I want to prepare before I die. It may be better known as a list of dishes which seem intimidating to me, but either way, it exists. Now, I have not actually taken the time to write down this list, and if I did, you would probably laugh at it, because I can assure you it is not comprised of a lot of complicated things, just foods which seem complicated in my mind. One of these dishes is chicken salad. I think one reason I am afraid to make chicken salad is because there are like three bajillion ways to make chicken salad, and I get overwhelmed by that large of an imaginary number. I have never been one to claim to have a seasoned palate, so even though I know what kind of chicken salad tastes good to me, I don’t believe I have the ability to discern what goes into that chicken salad. So I just sort of gave up.

Until this past weekend.

My dear friend Chelsea, whom I was blessed enough to meet my freshman year of college, has a great blog which you all should check out. She also has an Etsy shop which is worth your time, particularly if you are clothing small children. She is close to finishing up a year far from home in New Orleans, Louisiana, and is using this time to really pursue her hobby of sewing, and, apparently, cooking. Last week she posted a recipe for chicken salad which sounded amazing, but I was scared. I wanted to somehow eat this chicken salad without actually having to cook it myself. Since I didn’t have the ability to hop in the good old Toyota Corolla and drive down to NOLA, I was left with only one other option: face my fears and make the darn stuff.

And I did.

And you guys, it’s AMAZING.

So go make some yourself.

If I were Katie Ett or somebody I would start a THIRD blog and solely devote it to crossing items off my Cooking Bucket List (a la Julie and Julia), but for now I’m just going to enjoy my amazing chicken salad and leave the blog a pipe dream.

Somebody heard and delivered.

The problem is that my sick day came on my last day of Christmas Break and was the Sick Day from Hell.

Ever had the feeling you were in the Twilight Zone? Yeah, that was my Sunday.

I woke up around 2 a.m. feeling really…funky. I went to the bathroom several times, but the feeling did not subside. I’d eaten pizza for dinner and I knew it was the culprit (needless to say I will never be eating that particular brand of pizza again…). I was in misery, but figured I could sleep it off.

Then 4 a.m. struck. As life’s little irony would have it, Ryan and I had just been having a (very weird) conversation a few days prior about how it had been SO LONG since either of us had last puked.

Ha.

Let’s just say my puke-o-meter has now re-calibrated itself. I truly don’t think I’ve ever been sick like that in my life. But the good news was that once it was over I felt better and hopped back into bed, at which point Ryan told me he was not feeling well. He had not eaten the pizza; in fact we had not eaten anything in common the entire day, so what made us sick is still a mystery. After a few moments, he got up and went to the bathroom. I was trying to get back to sleep when I heard strange thumping coming from our bathroom. I got up to see what was the matter only to find Ryan passing out on the floor.

I am here to tell you, that was the scariest moment of my life. I thought he was dying. I started freaking out and called my mom.

We’re still not sure what that was all about – maybe low blood sugar because he hadn’t eaten much for dinner on top of the nausea? But I was starting to feel pretty weird. I was puking up my guts and Ryan was passing out? What had infested us?!

We both finally managed to go back to sleep in the early morning, just in time for Silas to wake up, of course. By the time 8 a.m. rolled around, we were both pretty pitiful. I tried to take care of Silas as best I could between sips of 7Up, but I finally caved in and begged my mom to come over and watch him so Ryan and I could sleep, and sleep we did.

I woke up feeling slightly better and walked into the kitchen where Silas started crying for me to pick him up. I did so, and promptly had to hand him back to my mom and run to the bathroom. Round Two.

I’ll speed up and bypass the gory details. Ryan (who never did toss his cookies) and I both felt miserable all day long, and after my mom left, I simply lay lifeless on the couch, watching a Dance Moms marathon, trying my best to amuse Silas who was horribly fussy. I felt like the world’s worst mom. It was truly a low feeling that makes me so sad when I look back on it, but what could I do, and what could Ryan do?

I woke up Monday morning feeling generally well, and as the day continued the only thing that seemed out of sorts was that I was voraciously hungry from keeping down nothing but some 7Up, a banana, and a handful of crackers the day before. We seemed to have left the Twilight Zone.

My brush with the 24-Hour Virus from Hell truly gave me a new lease on life, though. In the classroom on Monday I felt rejuvenated! I was excited to see my students and introduce new material! I was happy to breathe the fresh air! When I got home I was excited to clean the kitchen! And strip the sheets! And make Silas a new batch of wipes! And do loads upon loads of laundry! Who would have thought? So I guess my sick day was much needed after all. I hope I don’t soon forget how pathetic and useless it rendered me, so that I can stay productive and engaged in life

Over the course of the past three or so days, Silas has been doing some weird stuff. Ryan and I were recently visited by the 24-hour virus from Hell (maybe more about that in another post), so I was already on red alert for Silas to be coming down with something. He had a temperature on Saturday of 101.9. It’s the first time we’ve ever taken his temperature ourselves, so sticking the rectal thermometer up his tushie already had this New Mom 2011 beside herself. Then when it registered that he had a fever, I started fending off tears, telling Ryan I didn’t know whether or not we should take him to the Emergency Room.

(Yes, seasoned veteran mamas, you can go ahead and laugh.)

There is a reason God has given people like me level-headed help mates. Ryan told me to give the kid some Tylenol and put him to bed. We did it, and he was fine.

The next day his temperature was gone, but he spit up an entire bottle – abnormal behavior for Silas indeed. After that, though, he seemed to be having the time of his life, so I tried to forget about it.

Both of these days we noticed that he had a cough which was getting progressively worse, but everything I read online said to give it a week, so New Mom 2011 tried not to freak out.

Until yesterday.

I picked Silas up from daycare and his primary teacher said with much gusto, “He has a really bad cough!” I told her I knew, and that we were giving him cough medicine (which we were). She also commenced to tell me that he had hardly eaten anything that day, and what he did eat had to be practically forced down. That was weird, but New Mom 2011 tried to chalk it up to a first-day-back-to-daycare-in-three-weeks fluke. But at dinner Silas refused to eat anything. I finally coerced him into eating a few bites of yogurt, but that was it.

And then came the bedtime bottle, which he flat-out refused and then fell asleep in my arms (also abnormal behavior). I put him in the crib, shut the door, and then had a meltdown, convinced that he was dehydrated, lethargic, and was not going to survive the night.

Ryan and I decided to wake him in a couple of hours and offer him another bottle. Again, he refused it. I went to bed utterly worn out, physically and emotionally. At 4 a.m. Silas started making noise, so I got up and offered him a bottle, which he took this time, but then when morning came, he wanted nothing to do with the bottle again. I should also add that he wanted nothing to do with a sippy cup. Basically, he wanted nothing in his mouth.

Oh, and what formula he did take, all came right back up over breakfast, at which point New Mom 2011 decided enough was enough: we were going to the doctor today.

And that’s where I needed my t-shirt. At the pediatrician’s office I sat in the sick waiting room for nearly an hour and a half with a squirmy baby only to go back to the examination room, describe my son’s nasty cough to the doctor, and then proceed to watch her pry Silas’ mouth open and show me where two bottom teeth are “breaking through” (I couldn’t really see it, but I’ll take her word for it). And, of course, this explains it all: not eating, the temperature, the fussiness, increased ear grabbing, increased congestion. Luckily the doctor did not treat me like the idiot I felt like. She gave me a nice, “You never know until you come in,” along with a prescription to help with the cough.

But I still felt like an idiot.

I made a promise to myself that after the long and difficult time we had trying to get pregnant, I would not complain about pregnancy or motherhood, but I’m finding it hard not to complain about how utterly and completely foreign this whole thing is. Silas will be NINE MONTHS OLD on Saturday, and I still feel like I have absolutely no clue what I am doing with him. I see some women with babies and toddlers and they seem like such naturals. I still feel like confused hired help. I always think, “At least I’ll know what I’m doing with the next one,” but I’m sure the next one will be completely different, and give me all sorts of other weird things to worry over and obsess about.

So when you see me in my t-shirt, let’s just say you’ve been warned. I don’t have a clue here.

But I totally knew it was shoes. And I was totally nervous.

The thought of Ryan buying me shoes is…well…scary. I was not sure what in the world he would have felt so certain I would like that he would want to purchase it for me, and on top of that I was not sure he even knew what size shoe I wore. I spent the weeks leading up to Christmas utterly and completely terrified of hurting his feelings when I opened that shoe box. The only saving grace I could think of was that Ryan knew I wanted some Tom’s Shoes because several months ago I was talking about them nonstop…until I just went ahead and purchased a pair myself. Still, I thought, maybe he bought me a second pair? So of course my nosy self had to check Zappos to see if they even carried Tom’s…and they don’t.

The nervousness continued up until Christmas Day. When it came time to open the gifts, Ryan handed me the wrapped shoe box first, saying, “Since you already know what it is.” I tore into it, praying I would not have to fake a happy reaction. And what to my wondering eyes should appear but these:

I started freaking out and shrieking, “I love them! I love them!” because I really did love them, and I really was in amazement that my husband would actually pick out shoes I felt so strongly about (in a good way). I was having this superb moment where I saw Ryan in a different light. The thought that kept running through my head was, “He really gets me! How wonderful to be loved by someone who understands me well enough to pick out an amazing pair of shoes!”

And then Ryan burst my little happy bubble by saying the following:

Ryan: You do know where those came from, right?

Noel: Um…Zappos?

Ryan: No, that’s not what I mean. They were on your Pinterest.

Noel: They were?!?! I don’t even remember pinning them.

But sure enough, there they sit on my “Products I Love” pinboard. I do remember pinning them now, but when I was racking my brain before Christmas, all I could ever remember pinning were two different pairs of Tom’s. It never occurred to me to, you know, actually check my pinboards.

I told Ryan that he really missed a golden opportunity to keep his mouth shut about his source and instead seem like the world’s most in-tune-with-his-wife’s-inner-desires husband, but he preferred to take the high road. And that’s why I love him.

And Pinterest, I love Pinterest too. It was quite the Pinterest Christmas in our home. In addition to my moccasins, Ryan noticed this little gem on one of my pinboards and snagged it for me as well:

I love how Pinterest makes it easy for everyone in the gift-giving process to be happy. What did we do without it?

I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head
‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said,
‘For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.’

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.’

Till ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Silas has been eating solids for nearly four months now. He now eats three times a day, and will probably start adding a fourth afternoon-snack-meal in a few weeks. I can wholeheartedly say that feeding my son food has been right up there in the most confusing things I have encountered since becoming a parent. What I am finding is that everyone has an opinion, and everyone’s opinion is different, and what I read in one resource is drastically different than what I read in another resource. Also, this is one area where I know I do have a considerable amount of freedom, but that scares me, because with freedom comes responsibility. I just want someone to tell me, “You do it this way” and be done with it. I’m mostly confused about things like how much my son should be eating and how often and whether or not he should be taking bottles with his meals and how much he should now be drinking from his bottle and how much he should be using a sippy cup. You know, just basically EVERYTHING. The reality is that Silas is 23 pounds and is not starving any time soon, but I still fret over stuff.

The last time we were at the doctor’s office, she told me he should now be eating table foods. I don’t understand what this means. The reason I don’t understand is that we make about 50 – 75% of Silas’ food in the Baby Bullet. This is real food, mashed up by a machine. Is this different or the same as feeding him mashed up food from the table? Which, by the way, he will not take because he has a very strong gag reflex when it comes to anything textured. Is that normal? Another stressor in this feeding journey.

What has me the most confused are Puffs. These things:

Silas is quickly getting to the age when he would be in the clear to eat these. They are a very sore spot of contention in our household. I won’t get into all the details, but I have blogged here before about how Ryan has lost over 100 pounds basically eating a “primal diet.” He eats no bread and sugar whatsoever, and only fairly recently has introduced fruits and starches back into his diet. He looks great, and I am very proud of him, but this new way of eating has caused a lot of arguments about how our children are going to eat. I still do eat breads and sugars, although I will concede that eliminating sugar would be nothing but good for me. But I still am not seeing the evils of breads, particularly whole grain ones, oatmeal, etc. If Ryan had it his way, Silas would never eat these things. So therein lies the arguments.

Anyway, back to the Puffs. I understand that Silas needs to start learning to use his pinchers and these Puffs market themselves as the best way to teach children how to feed themselves using that skill, but I fail to understand why Silas just has to have Puffs to teach him this. From what I have heard (I will admit I have not extensively researched Puffs), these Puffs have no nutritional value, so I am left with the question why feed them to my son?

I fear that if we put food in front of him that has no nutritional value and whose sole purpose is to teach him to eat, I am teaching him bad habits. I want him to learn that eating is good and that food is good, but that we eat healthy food for the purpose of nourishing our bodies. I don’t want him to learn the habit of snacking or eating something just because he happens to be at the table.

So I guess my question for you moms is what to do. Is there a Puffs-alternative that will teach Silas these necessary skills? Are they even necessary? I know that I could always give him small crackers or little pieces of toast, but as detailed above, my husband is not wild about that idea, so best-case scenario would be some kind of food we can both agree on.

Does this first-time mom thing ever get easier? We’re going on eight months here and I still sometimes feel like I don’t have a clue!

I can’t not post my impressions of the movie. It’s just not in my blood (see what I did there?). So here goes…

I totally loved this movie, and totally loved it way more than I expected to. Let’s face it: Twilight sucked, New Moon rocked, and then, for me anyway, Eclipse fell back into the sucktitude category. Needless to say, my expectations were low for this one. It’s been four years since I read the book, so I couldn’t really remember what was coming enough to hardly know what to look for (other than the obviously unforgettable babymaking and subsequent baby birthing and vampire-creating), but maybe that was a blessing in disguise because I wasn’t able to sit there and pick it apart like I was the last two Harry Potter installments after I decided to re-read the book first.

Anyway, I digress. I found myself just smiling constantly throughout this film because I was just relishing it. What tends to annoy me about the other films is the fighting. I want to see a vampire chick flick, not some boy movie, so the fighting annoys and bores me all at once. This movie has no fighting! I really felt like for nearly two hours I was wrapped up in the world of Edward and Bella, something I’ve been craving for three movies now.

I loved all of the head nods at previous things, like we were all part of an inside joke and we’d traveled this path together for some time now, such as Flightless Bird, American Mouth playing during the wedding kiss and Bella and Edward playing chess with the red and white pieces. There was probably more I missed, but those were two I noticed and loved.

The whole honeymoon was wonderfully executed. It gave me that warm, butterflyish feeling that the book always gives me, and for the first time I was impressed with Kristin Stewart’s acting ability. Yes, I’m shocked too. I felt like her performance in the honeymoon scenes really captured that virginal fear-turned-ectasy which Bella experiences. It felt real for once. Bravo, Kristin. And who didn’t love seeing Edward in shorts and a boyish grin? I wish they’d just make a two hour film about the honeymoon, but maybe I’m weird.

My accolades for Kristin Stewart don’t stop with the honeymoon, either. I thought she did an excellent job of translating Bella’s maternal hunger for her child onscreen. I was kind of blown away considering she’s spent three movies now delivering flat, painful, lifeless lines.

My boss (who is also my friend, but since I introduced her in this post as my boss, we’ll just go with it) kept commenting on how bright and colorful she thought the movie was compared to the past three, and the more I think about it, I think she is right. It was a giant breath of fresh air to see so much beauty and vividness in this film, from makeup, to costumes, to sets. It just felt more full of life, and I’m going to guess that was intentional.

My only real complaint is the wolf scene, when Jacob breaks from the pack. It was all I could do not to have an immature moment and laugh. I mean why oh why would they suddenly decide that they need this really weird CGI wolf scene with weird wolf voices? It seemed suddenly very Narnia-ish and I did not like it.

So those are my thoughts. What are yours?

In the Fall of 2005 I had the amazing opportunity to study abroad in Regensburg, Germany. I lived with a host family (a mother and her young son), and on the evening of December 5, my host mother told me to remember to leave my shoes outside of my door so that St. Nicholas could come during the night. A bit unsure what was going on, I obliged her in the name of, “When in Rome…” and all of that. Lo and be hold, when I awoke in the morning this was waiting outside of my door:

I loved it. It was magical, whimsical, and just plain fun. I thought it was just a German thing, until I started researching it. While my understanding is that St. Nicholas Day is much more practiced in Europe than the good ol’ US of A, there’s no law saying we can’t celebrate it here. And so, this year the Cordle family begins.

Celebrating St. Nicholas Day actually is pretty perfect for us. I grew up doing the whole Santa Claus thing. Christmas is my favorite holiday, and waking up on Christmas morning to all of the gifts left by Santa, the cookie crumbs and empty glass of milk, and half-chewed carrot in the yard courtesy of Rudolph was the epitome of magical for my childhood self. And then one day during my second-grade year, some nitwit said something to my teacher in front of the class about Santa not being real and the teacher replied, “Hush, let’s not spoil anyone’s dreams.” I marched right home after school and demanded that my mother tell me what was going on. She sat me down and carefully and calmly explained to me that there was a man named St. Nicholas who had lived a long time ago and gave gifts to children, but he has since passed away, and that parents play the part of Santa Claus in his honor.

I did not handle this information well. I broke down into tears and called my mom a liar over and over. Then, just as I was about to regain composure, it hit me that this meant that the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy were also fictional characters brought to life by my fraudulent parents, and I started the meltdown process all over again. I can recall this memory as vividly as if it happened yesterday. It really scarred me for life.

So I always knew I did not want to do Santa Claus with my children. Ryan didn’t have a traumatic Santa revelation like myself, but he was not too crazy about the secularization of Christmas either. We always talked about this on and off and discussed what we would do instead, but the birth of Silas has forced us to make a decision.

And so we have. On the evening of December 5, Silas will put his shoes outside of his door and in the morning they will be filled with gifts. He will know they are from Daddy and Mommy in honor of St. Nicholas. On December 6 we will read together as a family the story of St. Nicholas, decorate the house with all of our Santa Claus decorations, and eat gingerbread, as is traditional. Then, on December 25, Silas will receive gifts from Daddy and Mommy because we love him and want to give him gifts. Plain and simple. Once he gets older, I may wait to put out his gifts after he has gone to bed on Christmas Eve because I want to still capture some element of that Christmas magic, but this year they’ve been sitting under the tree for two weeks because, let’s face it, the kid has no idea what is going on.

I’m excited. I’m excited that my baby boy is here and that Ryan and I can finally implement something we’ve been dreaming about and planning for years now.  I’m excited that this is sitting outside of his door:

Silas' shoes are so tiny! We went super traditional this year: a wooden toy, something practical (pacifiers), and money. All of these gifts represent some aspect of St. Nicholas' life.

If you are interested in more information about celebrating St. Nicholas Day, as well as other Christian holidays, I have found Celebrating the Christian Year by Martha Zimmerman to be extremely helpful.

and then a picture like this

it’s pretty safe to say that I get depressed. It’s not that I am sad that Silas is growing up – that’s really exciting – it just makes me sad that he will never, ever be a little baby again. That’s time I can’t get back and I often question whether or not I cherished it enough.

Physical things like those photos drive home the point that Silas is no longer a little baby, but lately I’ve been made acutely aware of this change in other ways as well. With the advent of month seven, Silas has started changing dramatically. My little boy is growing up.

We’ve noticed that month seven has brought along some attachment issues and separation anxiety. Literally the moment I am out of Silas’ sight (and there is nothing else around to distract him), he will burst into a dramatic fake cry/whine. I always thought that this would be a difficult part of motherhood for me where I could not stand to see my child upset about my not being with him, but instead I find it pretty trying. Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s horribly sweet that he has developed enough to know that I am Mommy and that he wants to be with me – but feeling like I can’t even go pee without him throwing a fit is a challenging experience. That little baby didn’t do that.

Silas has also figured out how to manipulate. One of his new favorite games is the How-Many-Times-Will-Mom-Pick-Up-This-Toy-When-I-Throw-It-On-The-Floor Game. Not my favorite. I will indulge him a few times, but after that I have to cut him off from the toy, which never goes over well. That little baby didn’t do that either.

Speaking of toys, Silas is definitely forming attachments to them as well and has clear preferences when it comes to what he wants and does not want. Take away a preferred toy at your own risk. What will really unleash the beast is if he gets ahold of something he is not supposed to have, because of course he thinks that item is the greatest thing ever and of course Mom or Dad has to take it away, thus inducing a meltdown. That little baby never did that.

Just this week Silas has really made some major developments. He can now sit up fully unsupported for very long periods of time. He has also started clapping and waving, and he will usually do it “on command” by copying someone else who does it. When he really started doing this for the first time this weekend, Ryan got so excited and said, “It’s like he’s a real person!” I laughed at his phrasing, but really the more I think about it, it’s true. Silas can now do things which a child can do. He is really beginning to understand how his body works and how to use it. That little baby couldn’t do that.

I love my big boy, but I sure do miss that little baby.