Fear and Gratitude

Fear and gratitude. I’m finding they go hand in hand when it comes to being a parent. I mentioned in my last post how everything we suffer as a parent is worth it. A few months ago, I learned that the oldest daughter of a friend of mine from high school, was diagnosed with Leukemia. She’s 3 years old. The same age as L. Cancer. I still have a hard time wrapping my brain around it.

Now, it often occurs to me, that my children could be taken away in an instant. I know it happens all the time. But I'm still trying to learn how to live my life and live with the fear. The fear does fade into the background of my mind getting covered by the monotony of my everyday life, but it doesn’t ever seem to go away. I watch E sleep with her legs tucked beneath her, her round, little bottom up in the air, her cheeks rosy and pink — or L running and jumping and leaping and laughing, so full of spirit, so full of life. Those are the moments I’m so overcome by the intensity of the love tangled with the fear of loss. The possibility of a loss so incomprehensible it’s enough to drive any parent to the edge. Instead of giving into the fear, of obsessing over things I have absolutely no control over, I try to live in the moment, to count my blessings, to truly appreciate how unbelievably lucky I am to have such healthy children. Am I just being neurotic or is this just part of being a parent?

This is a rhetorical question by the way, I’m fully aware of how neurotic I am.

Love hurts

E is just a love. And she lures you into thinking she’s as gentle as can be. She’ll be sitting in my lap gazing at me. She’ll reach out her soft, doughy fingers as if she wants to stroke my cheek. I’ll lean in and smile wistfully, ready to etch this wonderfully sweet moment in my brain. Only then she claws at my ear with one hand and grabs a fistful of hair with the other and she lunges at my face like she’s using her head as a weapon. Her face comes slamming into mine and she smacks my nose so hard tears spring to my eyes. And while I’m trying to unfold all her fingers to untangle my hair she moves and goes in to give you one of those precious and slobbery open-mouthed kisses that babies are famous for, except now she has 2 teeth and she tries to use whatever feature on your face she comes in contact with first as a teething toy. CHOMP! I’ll shriek and beg Hubby to come and save me from the leech and when we finally pull her away, she’s so incredibly proud of herself, she squeals and flaps her arms in excitement.

She does have these moments of tenderness though. She snuggles so well. She’ll be cradled in my arms as she sleeps and suddenly she’ll burst out into a deep, heartfelt belly laugh and wake herself up. She’ll look up at me, lift her arm and stroke my cheek as her eyelids grow heavy and she drifts off again. I’ll lean down and kiss her pouty lips and remind myself that it’s worth it. It’s worth the battle scars (aka: stretch marks) that cover my abdomen, hips and thighs. It’s worth the sleepless nights, the dealing with temper tantrums in public places, the $100+ every 4-6 weeks I pay my hairdresser to cover the gray hair they’ve caused. It’s worth the pain – physical, emotional, mental - to have these beautiful gifts that are our children. I am so grateful for my girls, so grateful that someone felt we were worthy enough to be blessed with them.



So please remind me of this post the next time I’m on my hands and knees with peanut butter trying to remove play-doh from the carpet or the next time I’m pre-treating and scrubbing a white shirt that I was wearing while feeding E and she decided to sneeze with a spoonful of sweet potatoes in her mouth.

Pretty now, yes?

So?! What do you think? (twirling, posing, batting my eyelashes) Do you like the layout?

It’s obvious I’m sure, that I have no clue what I’m doing around here. I realized that so many of the blogs out there have such wonderful and warm designs, what with the fluffy pillows and the warm crackling fireplaces and the comfy couches where I could sit and drink wine. Mine however, reminded me of the pictures of my parent’s first apartment, with the old turn table that skipped, the huge wooden cable spool used as a table and the naked walls.

Fortunately, hubby is incredibly computer savvy and has been very helpful in setting up my place. So throw the tomatoes at him if you don’t like it! I probably could have figured it out, but I grow increasingly agitated when I can’t figure things out as quickly as I’d like. If I feel it's taking too long, I just throw up my arms and walk away. It’s a very fine line with me. If it’s too elementary, I get bored and lose interest, if it’s too difficult, I get frustrated and lose interest. Hubby gets irritated with me when I get all whiney when it comes to figuring out computer stuff. He truly wants to explain things to me because he knows I’m perfectly capable of learning and understanding but then he starts talking about profiles and directories and gigabytes and RAM and my eyes start to glaze over and I start to drool all over his keyboard and he gets all irritated again, so it’s really no use. Trouble is, I work with computers all day everyday, and I’m sure it would be extremely beneficial for me to know more about them, but for now, I’m happy knowing just enough to get by. Ignorance is bliss!!

Ready or not...

Um, hi! I’m new here. Is this seat taken? I’m painfully shy you see, so starting a blog is making me quite anxious. My husband, (hubby) has been very supportive of me during this week long journey to start this blog. What’s that? You think taking a week to decide whether or not to start a blog sounds a little neurotic? Stick around, I’m going to take neurotic to a whole other level!

I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that I have no life outside of hubby, my 3-year-old daughter ‘L’ and my other daughter, 8-month-old ‘E’. I no longer have time for real hobbies, like mountain climbing, or scuba diving, or cross country skiing (nor do I have the muscle tone, stamina, desire, or love of the outdoors to perform said activities). So, for now, my life revolves around my girls. And I’m ok with that.

I do however, have a passion for baking. I don’t think ‘passion’ even does my feelings justice. Perusing cookbooks is my secret pleasure. My perfect Saturday afternoon would be spent sipping lemonade with a stack of dessert cookbooks. I would lazily read through every recipe, ooo’ing and ah’ing, dog-earing and bookmarking my favorites, imagining what party or occasion would warrant such a delicious dish. I don’t really like to ‘cook’. I like to ‘bake’. And yes, there is a very distinct difference, at least in my house. Hubby cooks, I bake. I am one of the incredibly lucky women who has a husband who not only enjoys to cook, who not only is fantastic at it, but also does 95% of the meal preparation in our house! That alone is reason to marry someone, no?

You may have noticed that my blog title mentions Bundt Cakes. So you would rightly assume that I would be including a recipe for a delicious Bundt Cake, and you couldn’t be more wrong. See, I’ve never made a bundt cake before, but ‘Babies and Bundt Cakes’ was just too cute not to use (thanks again, Danielle)! I promise I’ll find a wonderful bundt cake recipe and share it with you. BUT…so you don’t feel as if you left empty-handed, I do have a fantastic recipe for a pound cake that I baked in a bundt pan! So it’s close enough, right?

I’ll provide for you the original recipe in all its buttery goodness, but I altered it a bit just for grins. I wanted more of a vanilla-y flavor to it so I threw in an entire vanilla bean with the sugar and blended it in the food processor (yes, that is an entire vanilla bean in addition to the 3 tablespoons of vanilla extract the recipe calls for). I sifted the sugar and poured it in my mixing bowl. I love the little flecks of vanilla bean in each piece. A tell-tale sign of real vanilla, if you ask me. However, it didn’t give it the intense vanilla flavor I was going for. I know, sounds crazy, but it’s true. It was still delicious though!



Oh, and hubby had a great idea. He suggested I use the Tahitian Vanilla extract that was brought back for us from Tahiti (from friends I’m still miffed at because they wouldn’t agree to purchase tickets for us to attend the wedding of their family member in Tahiti – whom we’ve never met - totally unreasonable people, and I’m still contemplating staying in contact with them), since they do produce some of the most phenomenal vanilla. Brilliant idea hubby! But perhaps that idea should have been provided PRIOR to the measuring, mixing and baking processes. Ah well. So, if you happen to try this recipe and happen to have any Tahitian vanilla on hand, be sure to use it and tell me all about it!


Butter Pound Cake


8 oz. Cream Cheese, softened
3 sticks butter, softened
3 Cups sugar
6 eggs
3 Cups Cake Flour
3 Tbsp Vanilla


Cream together cream cheese, butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time, incorporating completely. Add flour and vanilla.

Pour into a greased and floured bundt pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 1.25 hours.