At The Well

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Too few days

I spend a lot of days worrying about cleaning and focusing on the "important" things. Clean bathrooms, check. Sweep and mop floors, check. Baby fed a well-balanced, vitamin enriched diet, check. Counters anti-bacterialed...check. Vacuuming, check. Bed made, check. Clean clothes folded, dirty clothes in hamper, laundry going, dishes up, dusting, windows cleaning...

You get the idea.

Yeah.

Ahem.

Abby ate a vanilla wafer yesterday, or was it Saturday. No vitamins. Lots of calories. And she loved it.

She also took all the cheerios out of her bowl and threw them on the floor. I thought she was done eating. So, I took her out of her highchair and put her in the living room to play. She then crawled back to where she had thrown the cheerios and ate them off the floor. I proceed to make myself lunch while I watched her do this.

I decided that our days are too few to worry about the small things.

And too few not to notice the smalls things.

Some small things that make my days:
1. My husband always kisses me goodnight, goodbye, hello, good morning, and just because. He also tells me he loves me in the same fashion.

2. Abby likes rain...just like her daddy.

3. When I leave the room, Abby calls after me by saying "Dadadadada!" I come back in a say "No, MAMA" and she just smiles.

4. I'd like to think this is something I taught her, but I doubt it. When I say "up", Abby stops whatever she is doing and reaches for me. Unless she is playing with something she shouldn't be, like a remote control or cell phone. Then she runs away laughing.

5. Brandon makes my coffee for me every night. And does the nightly dishes while I get Abby ready for bed. Then we pick up toys together. I love this.

Even though there are a lot of other things, that is it for now. Time to get some sleep for another day of small things. To enjoy rather than worry about.

Mother's Day

The poem in the Mother's Day card from my dad:

A Mother's Love by Helen Steiner Rice

A Mother's love is something
that no one can explain,
It is made of deep devotion
and of sacrifice and pain,
It is endless and unselfish
and enduring come what may
For nothing can destroy it
or take that love away . . .
It is patient and forgiving
when all others are forsaking,
And it never fails or falters
even though the heart is breaking . . .
It believes beyond believing
when the world around condemns,
And it glows with all the beauty
of the rarest, brightest gems . . .
It is far beyond defining,
it defies all explanation,
And it still remains a secret
like the mysteries of creation . . .
A many splendoured miracle
man cannot understand
And another wondrous evidence
of God's tender guiding hand.

Thanks Daddy.

Homemaking

From Carolyn Mahane's blog Girl Talk, G.K. Chesterton on Homemaking:

"[Woman is surrounded] with very young children, who require to be taught not so much anything as everything. Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren't...."

"[W]hen people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge [at his work]. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean…. I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children [arithmetic], and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness."

Semi-crunch?

So, I guess I have some confessions regarding the crunchiness of my mominess so far...

Crunch, crunch, crunch (Kashi style):
1. I am cloth diapering.
2. I am a SAHM.
3. I make my own house cleaning solutions.
4. I make my own diaper wipe solution and use it until I run out of cloth wipes.
5. I don't know if I exactly AP (attachment parenting), but we co-slept out of sheer necessity for the first two months. Then we moved her to a cradle in our room, then a crib. So be it. Don't we have to have more kids?? That said, I NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER let Abby CIO. Never. Not on my life. And I rock her to sleep for naps. I love it. I only let her feed herself her own bottle because she took it from me. Yes, TOOK it from me.
6. I make my own babyfood when Abby will eat it.
7. I wash in cold water only.
8. I only use California baby and Aveno.

The non-crunch, soft side:
1. I do not recycle because the city I live in doesn't make it easy to do so. Yes, I am lazy. If they picked up for recycling, I would completely separate!
2. Sometimes, I let Abby watch T.V. just because it will calm her down...she has something else to focus on besides being pissed at me taking the newspaper out of her mouth. Sue me.
3. I buy things, lots of things, TONS of things, that aren't biodegradable. Oh well.

I dunno, I might add onto this later if I think of more. Seems like I'm a semi, because when I make choices, my primary concern is Abby, not our planet. If something is safer for her or allows me to have more time with her, I'll do it. I love her to pieces. Chubby, sweet-smelling, dramatic, actress-worthy, gorgeous smile, babbling, wanting-to-crawl-but-can't-because-her-butt-is-too-big, trying-to-walk, kissing only mommy, squeeling pieces.

Who let the dogs out? Maybe the big dog himself...

From the Wall Street Journal....

Pay Collars Won't Hold Back Wall Street's Big Dogs

By JASON ZWEIG

Of all the decrees that come spewing continually out of Washington, there is only one that works every time: the law of unintended consequences.

This past week, the Obama administration slapped a $500,000 cap on cash compensation for senior financial executives whose firms receive future federal aid. That put an official U.S. stamp on the outrage of the investing public.

Heath Hinegardner

In 2008, Wall Street lost more than $35 billion and triggered trillions more in losses around the world -- but rewarded itself with $18.4 billion in cash bonuses. That defies the common-sense judgment that it is good results, not bad, that should be rewarded; most dog owners know better than to give Fang a biscuit after he takes a chunk out of somebody's finger.

So Wall Street got its just deserts. Unfortunately, while this move rightfully punishes yesterday's fools, it may inadvertently create tomorrow's culprits. The Treasury Department stated that the pay cap is meant to "ensure that the compensation of top executives in the financial community is closely aligned not only with the interests of shareholders ... but with the taxpayers providing assistance to those companies."

If only it were so simple. "The search for ways to get around this," says one expert on Wall Street compensation, "started within minutes of the announcement."

For starters, the limits seem to apply only to "senior executives" -- the chief executive, chief financial officer and the like -- and not to many of the people who can earn the really big bucks on Wall Street, like traders, hedge-fund managers and the mad scientists who cooked up all those derivatives that almost destroyed the world financial system. Leaving the compensation of these hot shots intact, while reducing the pay of the people who are supposed to boss them around, isn't going to make the investing world any safer.

Outsourcing is another way to get around a pay cap. In 2003 and 2004, managers at Harvard University's giant endowment came under withering fire from the ivory tower for earning upward of $35 million apiece. They soon left to start their own firms, which were promptly hired by the endowment and got paid a percentage of assets under management rather than a cash salary and bonus. That new form of payment stopped the criticism cold -- even though it isn't likely the managers earned any less. Nor did it reduce risk-taking: One spinoff from Harvard Management Co., Jeff Larson's Sowood Capital, blew up in 2007, dealing Harvard a $350 million loss.

Wall Street firms could easily follow in Harvard's wake, spinning off a trading or underwriting operation as a new company and retaining an ownership stake in exchange for a share of the profits and losses. The top dogs at the new firm would no longer face limits on their compensation, but the shareholders' capital at the original firm -- including taxpayer dollars -- might be at even greater risk than before.

Finally, the new rules from the Treasury Department permit Wall Street's "senior executives" to get incentive pay in the form of restricted stock or similar long-term incentive arrangements. But there is no rule yet against cashing all of it in at that point -- what compensation experts call cliff-vesting.

Thus, managers may be tempted to take greater risks in hopes of speeding up their preferred-stock payoff. If the risks go bad, Uncle Sam will eat the losses. "It's the classic trader's option," says George Wilbanks, a managing director at executive recruiter Russell Reynolds Associates: "Heads I win, tails you lose." He adds, "That's my biggest fear: that people are going to swing for the fences to get to the cliff-vest faster."

Psychologist Elke Weber of Columbia University has a different take. She doesn't feel that managers will become reckless now to speed up their preferred-stock payoff. But that risk could rise rapidly as firms come closer to getting Uncle Sam off their backs.

The whole financial fiasco is one big unintended consequence. Securitization was supposed to spread risk to folks willing to bear it but instead ended up concentrating it in the hands of people who didn't understand it.

Wall Street imploded largely because the inmates -- the star traders and quant geniuses -- took over the asylum. Paying the wardens less won't put the inmates back in their cells.

Write to Jason Zweig at intelligentinvestor@wsj.com

Counting the Cost of Homemade Babyfood

So, it sounds great, right? Making your own baby food. How wonderful. Your child gets veggies and fruits and the like that have never been dehydrated...even organic for half the price if you wish!

It is natural, it is loving....it saves money!

It is also time consuming and messy....

But I love to do it! I honestly enjoy it....as weird as that may seem.

But for those of you who are considering doing it, count the cost my friends! You know that little Gerber plastic cup you have at the end of feeding your little one?

Well, when you are done making pears and oatmeal, this is what you are left with....