Chronicles of a Suburban Commune: Day 11

The first week tested the mettle of the Brynard-Milne household.

We've been busy weathering icepocalypse '09 and obliterating three instances of fierce but short illness with different sets of symptoms.

Photos tk soon, once the Milnes three are again in top form (I'm the last of the assailed.)

Meals shared, counting at least twice each for leftovers:
— Two batches of Naomi's turkey chili
— Naomi's spicy lean beef stew with vegetables and lots of yummy thyme
— Turkey meatballs over lemon rice with pea-and-cottage-cheese sauce I made (consulting Rachel Ray only because she was there with turkey meatballs in the index)
— Will's excellent go at chicken stir-fry with Sriracha for sad-sack sinuses

Baby observations of note:
— Jocelyn greeting Charlie first thing in the morning with a lifted dress; Charlie getting that this is funny and laughing his tuckus off
— Babies hugging and giggling, then falling under the table together, switch to sobbing
— Babies crying upon their attemped removal from Jocelyn's crib
— Charlie marching straight to Jocelyn's pink wooden princess throne and — sitting still

Since our adventures have been largely constrained to the house, we haven't done much to solve storage problems or pursue aforementioned memberships, save for an ugly trip to IKEA where we left with applesauce all over our pants and a really sucky emergency sippy cup.

We saw this in a copy of USA Today Naomi brought home from the outside world. It's so great to live with people we like.

Chronicles of a Suburban Commune: Day 1

It was New Year's Eve when we popped the question.

We'd previously discussed the idea for about 47 minutes during the drive home from my parents' house, tired and batty from the holidays -- from the baby tug-of-war that only got worse when our teacher moms were on break; from rushing clumsily around our cumbersome work schedules, scrambling to finish well-intentioned homemade gifts and surrendering to second choices and rush shipping.

Even wedging in our family's budding traditions -- decorating a Christmas cactus, piling into the car in footie pajamas on Christmas Eve to look at lights -- had been near- impossible to pull off. We were chauffeuring Charlie to Rowlett or Fort Worth to pacify family, and out of necessity with Fabulous Nanny gone. Working on Christmas Eve was a new thing for me, as was having a one-year-old at home for the holidays, exclaiming "BALLS!" at the sight of seasonal decor and hobbling on stealthy legs to answer the door in a velvet Santa hat.I was exhausted. The season for hearth and family drove home how much I needed to nurse my own; to somehow have more time with Will and the baby; to stop running frantic and get a life. Cutting my hours at work wasn't an option. We needed to pay off debt and save money. But we also needed to tend the yard, to work out, to eat healthier, to give Charlie the opportunity to be social, to hang out more as a couple ...

So, out of nowhere, I asked:

"What if we asked the Brynards to move in with us?"

The idea immediately appealed to Will: Splitting our 1600 square feet with a family of young parent friends and their daughter, who happens to be the same age - to the hour - as our son. Ralph Brynard had lost his job in October and, with the drone of economy-induced bad news at newspapers everywhere, who the hell knew what would happen with mine. The Brynards are fond friends, but not longtime friends with whom you have expectations and issues that would impede a healthy housemate relationship.

They'd get two rooms in the front of the house -- the office, and Charlie's room. Lending the nursery I'd poured my pregnant apprehension and hour of loving wait into would feel a little sad, sure, but we'd be able to switch off tending the kids after bed time and going out (!!) to shows and movies and dinner parties, without payment in guilt or dollars. We'd be able to finally join the local produce co-op. Will and Ralph could build that deck out back. We could garden together, carpool to storytime and swimming lessons, and energize each other with the considerate responsibilities of roommatedom (read: I'd have to do dishes more often, or there'd be none to eat on.)

As we talked about the onslaught of pros that came to us so quickly as easily, I started to feel as if the would-be joint venture were a cause we were advancing. After all, wasn't this the implied answer to the go-it-alone American parenting crisis Judith Warner writes about in Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety? And wouldn't we find the diamond in the rough times our country was going through; the fuller dinner table, the shared space, the hand lent?

Ralph, Naomi and Jocelyn came over for a low-key New Year's Eve, with pizza, Wii and champagne on the menu. We'd canceled plans to go out, as did they, due to weather and general exhaustion. Trying to be nonchalant, or at least not pushy, we brought it up after chatting about our jobs.

Ralph later told us he thought we were joking. But Naomi immediately took to the plan, and convinced Ralph to step over doubts he had about sharing a house with anyone after they'd had a rough run rooming with her parents as a new family. They'd be ready to move in, as soon as a month from now.

The first fruit of our decision was the zen of downsizing. Tim Gunning closets like crazy, I packed my car to the brim with every outgrown item of Charlie's wardrobe I could part with and pairs upon pairs of shoes I hadn't worn in a year. I'd set aside so many of my clothes to donate that the rack in my side of the closet dwarfed my stuff; the clothes left took up 1/4 of the once-cramped rack space.

Today, when Naomi came with her first trip of clothes for the closets, I was repaid for my faith with a perfect calf-length, creamy beige wool coat, vintage 1940s, worn once. Too small for her, she said. A black jacket, too. I passed on some chunky bracelets I'd set aside for gifts, just her style.

And a sense of restraint is seeping into other parts of my day. I reached for yerba mate tea on Saturday, even when I was completely zonked, craving espresso and chocolate. After work, I've tapered off with the snacking. Still haven't managed to work out in any rhythm (but soon, soon this will be feasible!)

Since our busy lives couldn't stop for the move, we had to crunch pretty much everything in today. The babies both spent the night away last night as we prepared our respective nests for the change.

Charlie's set up in our walk-in closet, a perfect little nook with storage aplenty and curtains to cover some of it on their way. Our pantry is slammed with food -- a lot of it canned from the Brynard camp, but we'll get fresher with our first jumbo batch of local produce in a few weeks (they were psyched to join the co-op.) Naomi and I spent some time coordinating kitchen tools; she packed away what we already had.

Both babies got to sleep in their new habitats -- eventually. They were ecstatic at Jocelyn's heaping collection of toys -- Charlie saw more lights in three hours today than he has in his little life. We've gone more minimal with his collection; more piano than keyboard, if you will. We'll see what he gravitates to when his stuff blends with hers as they play.

Jocelyn seemed to be most affected by the move. She was a bit weepy and seemed very confused, alternately crying at the sight of me when I went to check on the group and clinging to me when I tried to leave. Charlie was hard to bed as well; he just seemed excited, though, that there was so little travel time between the bathtub and his adjoining bedroom.

The one hitch so far is a lack of storage for Will's and my things. We have a makeshift rack and a shelf mounted in a corner of our room; it's not enough to hold even our newly shaved repertoire, and it's making my head hurt. Ever had a two-hour conversation about storage options on four hours of sleep in a room with laundry and shoes strewn everywhere? Bleh. We scoured the IKEA catalog for wardrobe ideas, thinking we might build one, and settled on an idea I had for curtained-off corner "dressing rooms," a way to soften our bedroom with grand, sweeping curtains off to both sides of our bed.

Will's fallen asleep reading Watchmen, and I should sleep ... could try a bath, but I'm still not sure how loud it is on Charlie's end. I'm anxiously chewing on the details of the setup. Confident we made a down payment on some peace, just wondering how long it'll take to deliver.

Fancy tummies, gather 'round the table:

I've been thumping this cookbook like a crazed evangelist.
Le Petit Appetit made it a joy to toss those sodium-sick Gerber jars from the pantry and take to the burner for everybody in the house.
Bay Area entreprenuer mama Lisa Barnes daintily introduces basic purees, homemade crackers, nutritional baking, and chicken soft enough for new teeth to rookie cooks like she would a blossoming foodie in a high-chair: Slowly, clearly, and with gusto. The cookbook, which includes snacks, meals, and healthy desserts tooled for ages 4 months to 4 years, includes age-specific food safety dos and don'ts and lots of common sense troubleshooting. Best of all, though, it carries a spirit of inclusion. There's no talking down, not to the kids in the recipe content (hello, dill yogurt dip before 12 months!) or to the discerning meal-planner (there are tips for freezing purees and loads of substitues for sensitive or choosey eaters.) And most all the goodies can and should be passed around to the bigs.

The juicy wheat-based muffins recipe has pretty much revolutionized our snack stash. C was just nine months old when I made the first using blueberry and apple purees. Since the chomper-challenged bugger already insisted on feeding himself, the soggy little treats made for a good precursor to tougher biscuits. And I've since saved some overstock bannanas and sweet potatoes by mashing them up for squishimuffins, as they're lovingly called. A proverbial thumbs-up from my permanent guest of honor:

Search "heartless + regression" on Google;

this should show up first.

Something tells me Google's first childcare facility was probably in the upper echelon of day care world, if only for the genetically prepared Google-spawns on the playmats. All those kids need are a few buckets and a Candyland set and they'll have a solar-powered car to drive their parents to interviews.

Gloss for loss

From the trenches at Sephora:

A lip gloss that'll hold you over 'till lunchtime?

We're fans of Too Faced, but this sounds a bit hokey. Wouldn't it work better to keep ingesting a little bit of that Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream on accident? (If you're new to this form of cracked lip therapy, think "horse linamint".) That'll spoil an appetite better than Healthy Choice.

Take a Bow, SB Honoree Number One

We adored the whimsical designs by Kit Pistol of Project Runway Season's Four. Even more so, we dug her own post-fem, nerd-spunky style. Those high-waisted suspenders and Cinderella head scarves she wore to the workroom were missed almost as much as her work for the competition when she was sent home.

The project that auf'd her really got us thinking: a sweeping, avant- garde, seamy-on-purpose hoop-skirted dress that featured layers and layers of pastel aprons. According to Kit, who was asked to design two pieces based on her model's short, curly hairstyle, the concept she sought to illustrate was "nesting."




Tim Gunn, Grandfather of Reasonable Fashion, was less than convinced of the aesthetic connection between the dress and Kit's idea. After the En Garde! episode he wrote on his Bravo! PR blog:

Frankly, the only nest-like aspect to her avant-garde design that I could discern was the circular shape of the skirt, but that’s a stretch. I was struck by how much the corset top, voluminous Southern-belle skirt, and apron overlay made me think of a poor man’s Marie Antoinette dressed for her le petit hameau.

Could Kit have meant to express "nesting" in the homemaking sense? Think so. We read the over-the-top premise of the dress coupled with the modest, sweet fabric and apron scheme as a homage to the fanciful image of a sweet, enterprising, leave-the-lamplight-burning-late kind of woman. Tim himself makes a case for this interpretation with his note of the Southern-belle skirt and traditional corset top.

Either way, we congratulate you, Kit, for your thought-provoking fashion choices, both on the mannequin and on your own cute bod.

We'd love to fork over sixty bucks at Fred Segal for your signature patent-leather hairbow, but we found an, um, poor man's plastic version at Claire's for $3.50.

xo,
Sugar

Operation Plan Portland: First Installment

It's important to disclose early on that SB girls are wanderlusty by default.

It delights us to support the local businesses that do thrive in our southern college towns/suburban neighborhoods/rural areas despite one-note growth and development. Best-kept secrets are more special when there are fewer gems to discover.

But Southern, er, comfort keeps us the novelties of the north mysterious and exciting: good public transportation, livable summer temperatures, and (to generalize), more culturally developed local color and European influence.

Deep down, our men recognize this. Sort of. At SB headquarters, Texas Monthy subscriptions have replaced our New Yorker daydreams, and perhaps rightfully so. We needed to fully connect with the goings-on in our indefinite home state instead of memorizing the Met's event calendar.

Our co-captain's intelligent Texas pride can come off like a high-brow Yankee-snub, though. That and a little cabin fever has caused us to suggest some enlightening travel this summer.

Now, no matter how evolved, good 'ol boys are more comfortable in the land of smaller ponds, heart-melting sunsets and fried chicken. When exposing our cowboys to locales outside of Dixieland, trips should be chosen wisely and planned carefully.

According to our very own rural-raised lover, Portland, Oregon is the first destination of choice. We agree for these reasons:

Nature abounds. Cycling trails, barefoot hikes, rivers, trees.

Um, it's Quirkytown, USA. The small business model here is especially inspiring for SB and hers, who dream of opening a classic toy store/24 hour old-school arcade/bagel shop someday.

Portland's got vineyards without the Napa travel cost, a strong, central arts scene, and is a muse to some of our favorite post-punk writers and artists.

(Maybe we'll bake Bitch some cupcakes while we're in town, with an extra dose of lightenup!.)

Outside Portland


Stay tuned for reviews of Pacific Northwest travel guides and TV specials featuring heavily-inked cooks.