Unwellness

reviews

-----of the article in the Times which I am SURE people will start asking me about any second:
I still won't be blogging about the technicalities of my marital status. And honestly? It would be great if it wasn't written about in national publications. We don't need the scrutiny. I was happy to read that A) the IRS wasn't interested in commenting and B) liberal states do not want to appear to be harrassing transsexuals. Huzzah all around. It's not like I am moving to the South any time soon anyway.

-----of American Idol
This is the first season that I am watching this part, the first season that I have ever watched a results show. I must say that I feel just a little bit more a part of something. I feel better when talking to my parents, less like I am holding myself above them with my disdain for lowbrow pop culture. I feel downright normal and American and it's fascinating.
That said, last week was a fricking travesty. Leaving that damn dreadlock boy and that damn blonde chick and taking away my Irish girl. For shame, America. Next they'll be voting off my other favorite belter, the one who did the Starlight Express number. It should be way more showtunes and way less Mariah in future.

-----of Baby Mama
There were issues. Like, (semi-SPOILER)

the part where they say that she took a test right away and it was negative so she thought it didn't work and then Tina Fey says that the drugs she was on could give her a false negative. What IVF drugs would give you a false negative? It's a false positive we get concerned with after triggers and such. Silly. They needed this to make the plot work. But oy.

I laughed a lot. The Sigourney bits were funny. I liked the Weeds guy who played the doorman. I liked the Steve Martin Whole Foods thing to a point. The end was dorky.
I love Tina Fey 4 realz, tho.

------of my time at the beach house with charlotte and fam:
Charlotte is going to marry Wes and be my sister wife. That is how much I love her. And her wife and her kid. Truly astonishingly lovely. The way they talk to that boy is just remarkable and was like having a real live parenting class take place in front of you. We were talking about circumcision and Smarty asked what we were talking about and Charlotte told him, "We're talking about penises and how some parents decide to do something where they remove a part of the skin on their sons' penises. Like your friend so and so." True and plain and not sugar-coating but not judging. Awesome. And it got better. Smarty: "I like my penis." C: "That's great. And do you think so and so likes his penis?" Nodding. Really, you don't meet too many boys who DON'T like their penises, eh? But so well-put. (It goes without saying, I hope, that I am not asking for circ commentary here)
We had such a good time with them.
And we played scrabble one night and Charlotte got 180 points in one turn. ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY POINTS. She used seven letters (we were playing a nine tile version) and covered two of the triple word score tiles. In which case you get to triple your tripling. None of us knew this was possible. It was outrageous. And then she was all amazed that none of us wanted to continue playing with her. After she got 180 points.

------of CIO
We have the initial go-to-sleep CIO down pat. More than a week now, every night. We were down to 1-3 minutes of crying until tonight when he suddenly cried for nearly 30 minutes again. We had put him down earlier than usual because he seemed so tired so maybe that was why.

Middle of the night is much, much harder. Wes and I didn't make a plan because things were going well. And then I decided to try to get him to go to 6am without nursing but I forgot to tell Wes. So we had a night of crap fighting hell where we were not awake enough to really talk and ended up letting the kid cry for 90 minutes before giving up, which is just awful. After that, I decided I needed a break from it for a little while. So I am still nursing at 4am and bringing him in to our bed if I can't get him down afterward with little fuss. He is crying at other times, though - random 2 or 3 am wakeups. We are not going to him before 4. I just can't do it anymore. 4 is the cutoff at the moment. When we get him to sleep through until 4, I will start shifting it later. And then I will tackle naps. I am aiming to have him all trained and scheduled by the time I go back to work. It is not fun but I really don't feel as bad about it as I thought I would, mostly because he acts EXACTLY the same whether we stand there and try to soothe him or whether we just leave him. He cries, he calms and starts to fall asleep, he wakes himself up and screams, repeat. He has to learn to put himself back to sleep. I can't teach him that. He has to do it himself. And learning it is a huge important gift. I don't want him to have this problem on an ongoing basis. I want him to be a good sleeper. And I need sleep, too. I had reached a level of fatigue that was making me a bad mommy. And a bad wife. And dumb. Plus, my body is crap as it is and lack of sleep is the number one thing that makes my fibro flare. Ow ow ow.

A question, though, for other CIO'ers (really not open to anti-CIO'ers, thanks) - what do you make of teething pain? Weissbluth, in a typically mean viewpoint, says that studies show it has no effect. That is just bullshit in my opinion. Teething hurts. Hurting sucks. I think I am more qualified to say so than Weissbluth. So. He is cutting 4 teeth all at the same time. We give him Tylenol before bed. Does anyone out there think the wake-ups could be because of pain? When the Tylenol wears off? Is it permissable, possible, advisable, to go in and give him another dose when he wakes up? Thoughts?

try not to pass out from the cute

Beck and Smarty at the Beach House

just quick

I have stuff to do tonight and tomorrow to prepare for my moms' group coming over to my house, husbands and all, on Sunday. We had a busy week with my family visiting and big stuff happening. And CIO going strong. I can't even call it that anymore because tonight there was no crying. There were 2 small peeps of protest as I put him down and then he rolled over and went to sleep. Maybe it will never happen again, but for tonight, I HAVE THAT KID! The one who went to sleep like that! Whoo-hoo!

In other news I would be celebrating if my head didn't hurt, I went for drinks with my colleagues from work and left Beck for a couple of hours with my sister. It's the first time I have left him with anyone other than Wes since the time (months ago) I went grocery shopping and left him with my MIL and got stuck on the wrong side of the Gowanus because the bridge was up and I called to check on them and he was howling so loudly that I couldn't hear MIL speak and I could do nothing and I sat in the traffic and cried. This went much more smoothly, let me tell you.

I joined twitter because it is like mini-blogging. I believe it could also make us actually check one another's blogs as opposed to just bloglines or the like. I have a little mini twitter feed on the side of my blog now for your amusement. If you twitter, you can follow me from your homepage, too. I don't know how long I can keep it up, but it's a hell of a lot easier than blogging when there's a baby climbing on you.

converted (yes, another post about fricking baby sleep)

I got one last chunk of time with Melissa by going over to the friend's house where she was staying after all our kids were in bed. We sat around while they finished their dinners and chatted. I have known the friend for almost as long as I have known Melissa (she was Melissa's college roommate, so I met her when I was 17) but somehow we don't see each other much when Melissa is not here. Busy people. Kids and all that. But still, we all get together and we remember things about one another and it is always entertaining.

Anyway, this friend has a 2 year old daughter and Melissa has a one year old son so I was drilling them both on sleep. Melissa has been an unhappy co-sleeper, falling into it much as I did for a month or so - you nurse the kid down with little trouble, then the kid wakes up periodically and when you cannot get them back to sleep, you just take them in to your bed because you are exhausted and can't cope. And you think that nursing while lying down in the bed will at least allow you to rest a little. My version, of course, involved some time in the Womb Chair That Sucks You Into Sleep Against Your Will, but it's a similar ordeal. Nursing when you don't want to, more than you want to. Feeling so desperate for rest that you do whatever it takes rather than what you feel might be the right move for your family or your baby. And then getting sucked into the Anti-CIO world because it is alluring to think maybe your desperate cosleeping maneuvers are beneficial even though you KNOW they are not beneficial for you personally. And in my case, it was also clear that it doesn't do much for Beck, since he has always slept even more fitfully when we have him with us for more than a few hours.

Anyway, we were talking sleep with the friend, whose daughter was sleep trained at 6 months. And by sleep trained I mean CRUNCHY GRANOLA as-close-to-attachment-as-you-can-get-without-cosleeping
sleep training. They stopped night nursing and had Daddy go in to soothe her when she cried. And it took a few weeks. Less than an hour when they began. Down to a few minutes very quickly. My friend said that she sometimes, during nap attempts, had left her daughter to cry for about 45 seconds or less and that when she went back after that, her daughter immediately went to sleep with soothing.

And that is when something clicked for me. Beck would NEVER do that. While I am a big advocate of trying things before you say 'it won't work,' I also know my kid. Well. I spend all day every day with him, you know. I have tried pretty much every method of sleep training with him, at least a little. And I know his reactions. And what I was thinking as she talked about her daughter was... "That will never. ever. work. with Beck. Not in a million years."

Because for weeks now we have been trying to soothe Beck to sleep by staying with him in his room, keeping him in his crib. And while at first it seemed like the duration of soothing required was shrinking, it was not. In fact, I came home from the friend's house to find Wes in Beck's room, at his wit's end. The baby had been screaming for 30 minutes and Wes had already dealt with an earlier wake-up. He was done. I took over. 30 more minutes and I was done. I left for a few reasons. One, I was exhausted - it was nearly 1 am and I got ready for bed. But even more importantly, there was no relief in my standing there. I finally realized that I was NOT helping him. I was not teaching him anything about soothing himself to sleep. He was just screaming and then starting to fall asleep a little and then getting quiet and then shaking himself awake and then screaming. I left because I needed a break.

After he screamed SCREAMED for another 30 minutes, Wes went back in and eventually got him to sleep.

The next night, I was bracing for the worst. I came in after bath and stories with Dad and nursed him. Except he didn't fall asleep. He nursed on both sides and then began doing some crazy twists. He rotated until he was face down and cuddled in the pillows and chewed on my arm. Then he rotated back around and smiled at me. Then he stood up and climbed me like a tree and began blowing raspberries at the curtains. I was at a loss.

Three months ago I would have told you he wasn't tired and wanted to play, that putting him down to bed would be fruitless. But not now. Now I am a schedule whore. And I read Weissbluth. I may not agree with him entirely, but I read him. And above all else, I agree with him that teaching our kids to be good sleepers is as important as teaching them to eat healthy food and be nice people.

So I put him in the crib. And I left.

He cried a bit. But immediately I knew I had done the right thing. The cry was completely different. It was more of a fuss. He never reached the SCREAMING. He didn't cry nonstop. He fuss/cried a bit, sometimes a little loudly, but always briefly. There were periods of silence. And the cries got quieter. And less than 30 minutes later he was asleep. He woke up about 1:30 am and we decided not to go to him. He cried for less than 10 minutes and it never got too crazy. He went back to sleep and slept until 4 am when I fed him.

Fluke?

Last night, my father and stepmother arrived as he was eating dinner, which is the first step in the nighttime routine. So both grandparents and both aunties from upstairs were all present for his dinner and his bath. He LOVED this attention. And was all wired, of course. Still, Daddy came home and did stories and I went in to nurse. And the same thing happened. Nurse, nurse, rotate, kick, smile, rotate, climb, spit. And into the crib he went. And out I went. And I left to go to dinner with my family. Wes reported that less than 20 minutes later he was asleep. And he DID NOT WAKE UP until 5:15 (and then we slept in our bed for a while, which was lovely).

Tonight. Bed routine with both of us home. And same thing. Nurse, nurse, play play play. I put him in the crib and left. Less than 10 minutes of fussing and he was asleep.

What. the. mothereffing. hell?

The things that have been different:
- Really making sure he gets 3 naps, whether they are home and ON ME or out in the world in a stroller, car seat or carrier. I am letting one or even two of the naps take place on my body while I watch TV or Internet because I am that convinced that they help matters. And I will tackle getting him in to the crib next. His naps don't have to be long - 30 minutes or so - but they are one of the things that were lacking during those days that led to the worst nights.
- Some mysterious difference in him that made him stop nursing to sleep. WTF?
- Velour sheets.

I don't know if it's going to work forever. But it's working now. I make absolutely NO claim that this is what others should do. HONESTLY. I obviously know that other methods can work for people with babies like my friend's. But I finally feel a total sense of relief. My relief comes from the fact that this is what I really believed to be the right choice for our family but couldn't bring myself to do. I did not like that we were still having to work so hard and be so involved in our child's sleep. I felt like we were doing him a disservice because he was still waking up just as often when we were standing next to him. I never felt like he was learning anything except that we were necessary for sleep and that we were big meanies who wouldn't pick him up. What I want is a well-rested, self-reliant kiddo. And this feels so much closer to that.

For now.

send the love

There are a bunch of things I want to blog about (my new enemy neighbor, how I am coming around to CIO, what the DVR means to me), but there is only one thing that's important right now:

Meanmama is in labor! Meanbabyboy is on his way!

rebuttal

At first I read the comment from juliag and got annoyed, my kneejerk reaction to anyone telling me to live in the now and appreciate my baby. I will live in the someday and be annoyed by my child all I like, thank you very much.

But then I decided that it's always good to remember to try, even though we almost all fail.

One thing that I realized as I sat in the dark room with the sound machine nursing Beck to sleep and trying to stay awake and not end up sucked into the Deep Dark Womb Chair of Fatigue... I do really like him a lot. I have said to more than one person lately, "I thought I was totally a baby person but I think I am more of a kid person after all. I am not as into the baby stuff as I thought I would be." But tonight that felt less true. When I say that, and when I look forward, it is because I already KNOW that I like 6 and 7 year olds. That was the age of GMB when we met and it was a whole whole whole lot of fun. Showing NYC to a kid is unbelievable fun. So I do often look forward to when Beck is old enough to appreciate things. But when I was thinking about this tonight, I realized how much I am cherishing the things he currently appreciates, too. I don't think I am missing anything. I do enjoy him so much. I am just tired and a little bit bored, honestly. But I do think he is pretty spectacular.

Mostly, I just want to say that the prior post was less about wishing Beck would hurry up and grow and more about missing my friends. It would be less emotional and whiny if one of them didn't live in fricking Ohio. And while I wish all of us a good sense of living in the now (except maybe Asia because seriously those first 3 months suuuuuuucked and I only say that because I know she is nodding right now, so I wish her a speedy fastforward to the more gratifying bits), I also take great joy in imagining our boys all the same age (they are all within 13 months but right now that means light years and someday it will mean nothing) and running off to play together while we drink wine.

And to the julie who commented about how the sleep deprivation is making me a different/bad person, I thank you. On many levels. Thanks for the nice comment. And thanks for the assumption that I am maybe not this bitchy all the time. I know a certain lovely husband of mine who might disagree. But I thank you ever so much.

And to my other amazing looooongtime local friends, like meanmama and gertielover, I am very interested in getting drinks with you, too. Gertielover (known her since I was 18) asap, Meanmama  (known her since I was 20) as-soon-as-meanbabyboy-is-ready-for-you-to-do-so, which I hope is still many many weeks away. I so wish I'd had a drink with you before you got pregnant, my dearest. And Irina (also since 18)... yeah, you're knocked up, too. It's like an epidemic.

keep your friends close

Let me start this, which is sure to be an epic post, with a little anecdote that illustrates my mindset going into this week's visit by my best friend.

On Wednesday, I had to stay home all day because the banister guy, who had promised to come last week and failed, finally called to say he was coming some time that afternoon. It is an odd situation because his work was done weeks ago and paid in full but then the flood led to some water/banister issues (ie, rust) that we needed help with and Banister Guy was kind enough to say he would come by free of charge to show us how to deal with it.

He called Wednesday morning and said, "I came by twice and no one was there. I thought you were home with the baby."

"Um. I didn't know you were coming. You didn't call to tell me you were coming so I went out."

"Yeah, not like my wife, my mother. They stay home with the kids and they STAY at home. You're always out running around. We need to put a leash on you!"

I KID YOU NOT.

"Ha. Ha. Ha." I did the world's most uncomfortable and obviously faked laugh because I was in shock.

Did he just say I needed a leash?

I would have said something to let him know what an offensive asshole he was. But he is doing this favor for us and I knew that once it was done I would never have to see him again. But seriously? Do I need this shit?

I have a fricking Masters degree, motherfucker.

Well, a bitch needs a leash, right?

-----------------------------------------------

I shouldn't blog anything about my day because I need to have a talk with my friends about it, a real live grown-up conversation about my insane snappy ridiculousness and the weeping that followed when I was alone again. But you know what? I can't have that conversation tonight, when I want to, because my best friend's husband doesn't have a fricking cell phone and therefore took hers for the night. And to punish them, I will write about it.

I couldn't get out of the house early enough to see my friends this morning. Asia of the 8 Week Old Twins and Melissa of Ohio - to recap, these are my best friends from age 14 on, having attended both my high school and my college and all of us having lived for nearly a decade near each other in Brooklyn.

Melissa is in town to meet the twins but she is staying with another friend very near Asia's. And the twins are happiest outside of the house so they have all been together a lot and I have been jealous as hell. I can't walk from home to the Botanical Gardens or the Zoo without paying for it in Hellish Fibro Worms. So I have to drive and meet them for our activities. And they all get up much earlier than Beck and I so they get an earlier start and we tend to miss them a lot. And I have all this damn construction stuff, like this morning when Other Banister Guy was an hour late so I didn't get to run the two errands I needed to and thus missed my friends even though they were out and about and I was, too.

I decided to stay out rather than go home and be around the banister work, so I spent three hours wandering the North Slope trying not to spend money and trying to keep the Beckster happy even though he was in his small stroller which he does not love.

I bought some sunscreen for him, as it was bright and 80ish today, and put it on him. And on my face. Just my face.

I went to the toddler playground in the park and chatted with moms of babies.

I went back and forth to my car to feed the meter.

I had an iced tea and nursed at the Te* L*unge after meeting and chatting with a mother of a middle schooler in my school who also has a baby.

I attempted to go by my school and chat with a colleague about some issues for next year but Beck fell asleep mere feet from the school door so I turned and kept walking in order to keep him asleep. And then I sat in the shade near the church and read the New Yorker, which felt lovely.

And then it was time to go to the zoo and meet my friends. Asia the Amazing who can get out of the house for a whole day with 8 week old twins and Melissa and her husband and their one year old. The husband came along on this trip because the last time Melissa came to NY it was difficult, to say the least, to handle the one year old for nearly a week on her own in a home not his own. The sleep was really amazingly awful. And he toddled and grabbed and needed a lot of very close supervision. And it isn't easy to see a lot of each other what with All. These. Babies. So husband came along this time.

We went to the zoo and Beck actually noticed and loved the sea lions and the prairie dogs and the baboons this time and it was very cool. Asia told me that she'd gotten a sunburn the day before from all the walking because she didn't think to put on sunscreen as Melissa and I had when we put it on our boys. Since her boys are too small for sunscreen. We laughed at the strange, mind-fried logic. But did I think to put some damn sunscreen on my bare shoulders at this point? I did not.

Strangely, by the time we were done with the zoo, Asia and I had both built up unexpected and enormous hormonal hostility toward poor Melissa's husband. Asia's took the form of rage over his lack of a cell phone, which disguised a sadness when watching him and Melissa with their son and recognizing that her own sons, being twins, would never or rarely have that two parent/one kid kind of attention. But she came right out and told Melissa this right there in the park after the zoo, all healthy and good.

My rage, nastier and not as clean, took the form of rage that Melissa's husband was going out with his friends (he hasn't been back to NY to see friends at all in maybe years, mind you) when I haven't had a drink out with my Melissa in literally years now because of them moving away. Not so thinly disguised sadness and frustration at where we all are in our lives and how little time there is for ME.

Because her husband and my husband and Asia's husband would all be happy to be with the children while we have drinks. They are all doing so on Sunday so we can brunch childless. But it's not so simple to go out for a drink. Or any other nighttime activity. I, for one, am not free until 9 and everyone else is pretty much asleep by then. All of us are tied to our sons' bedtime routines by the nipple. Our own doing, yes. Our own choices, yes.

So yes, selfish and silly. Unnecessary rage. I could leave Wes with a bottle. There are six bags of breastmilk in the freezer and he has offered many times. I could work to eliminate nursing from the bedtime routine. But I won't be doing that. I could just run off and not worry about how Wes was going to deal with it - he has been resourceful for many naps and maybe a couple of bedtimes before. But I can't bring myself to do this. I stay home. I nurse to sleep. I whine. I freak out. I end up sobbing in the car because I can't see enough of my best friend during her visits.

------------------------------------------------

It is clear to me that I am not getting enough sleep. Last night was one of the worst so far in our CIO For Wusses Extravaganza (the night before that was the best, with zero random wake-ups, so we were lulled into hope). There were multiple middle of the night hours of screaming. SCREAMING. I had to leave and wake Wes to help me because I was at the end of my ability to soothe or be kind. I was somewhere between screaming myself or just nursing him already and ruining our weeks of work so far.

Maybe I shouldn't see people after a night like that. Maybe I am not really fit for company. I feel like such a crazy person any more. I feel ungrateful and exhausted. Selfish as hell. Nervous that all of this means I am not doing a good job of this. Bitter. How am I still bitter? Why am I such an innately bitter bitch?

He just woke up again.

He has four teeth all coming in simultaneously on the top. Can you imagine how that must feel?

Wes had him totally asleep and then put up the side of the crib and now he's wailing again. Damn crib sides. How the eff are you supposed to put them up?

-------------------------------

The good part about having loooooooongterm friends is that they will forgive you when you snap at their husbands and then blog about it. They are like my sisters, these women. But much like my real sister, who lives fricking upstairs, I don't see enough of them to really get to the good stuff lately and half the time I am too tired to talk deeply about anything but sleep training and poop. I miss talking for hours. I miss girls' getaways. I miss their help in analyzing myself and my life. I miss the three of us as a unit that came before husbands and sons and jobs and home ownership. I miss high school and college and first Brooklyn apartments within walking distance of each other and every new years eve together.

We'll get all of that back, right? These babies will get bigger and we will have lives again, right?

Until then, it feels like holding on to sand.

-----------------------------------
I am so sunburnt it is agony. And I have Hellish Fibro Fire Worms, despite skipping the long walks.

eight months old

welcome to the neighborhood

We have lived here almost exactly a year and today I finally feel like we are a little bit a part of our block.

I was actually pacing a little, trying to figure out how to move the car for street cleaning, get the boxes of dog beds off to Fed Ex for shipping, and make it to moms' group all in the next 40 minutes while the baby is having the Best. Nap. Ever. In his actual CRIB. And I am loathe to mess with that.

And the doorbell rang, and while I had a moment of pure rage (this nap has also included the ridiculous new phone ringing its Nutcracker ring, the dogs barking over more than one thing, and Lexie dog knocking a giant box off a chair... and he slept on), it turned out to be my neighbor. Yesterday he called me and told me he was moving his car and I could have his spot. But I was blocking him in a little during the street cleaning time so I thought maybe that was why. Today he popped over to tell me he was leaving his spot across the street, a spot that would mean I don't have to worry about where the car is while the baby is asleep and I am at moms' group (I can do the shipping later). And the baby slept on so I was able to dash out and spend 30 seconds moving the car (in case you cry neglect at this, know that I was never further from him while moving the car than I am when I am in the basement of our house, and I took the monitor).

Sometimes people are nice.

Oh, and PS - the secret to the First Crib Nap in ages? Velour. Bad-mommy velour blanket in the crib. Under him. We learned this trick in CA because we used one of the blanket gifts we received to try to make the Pack & Play more cozy and it worked. Now I need velour sheets, as I am not willing to leave him with a blanket all night yet. But for naps, it is like a secret sleep weapon.

the environment post

Tonight I saw something on the news about our gigantor indelible carbon footprints from hell and I felt just a wee bit smug while they quoted statistics about the gazillion diapers each baby contributes. I love cloth diapering and am so happy to be able to do it. I wouldn't do it if I had to share a washer or if I had twins. I don't love it that much. But I do love it. And I love feeling a bit smug. I especially love when other people with houses and washers, like the suburban people Wes works with, talk about how crazy we are, what environmental zealots, and they say it with a mix of disgust and admiration. They don't know what they are talking about, of course - cloth diapers are not what people used to think of and you end up explaining a lot. But they probably wouldn't do it, even with washers and dryers as fancy as ours. They think we are weird or that we are making a lot of work for ourselves. And this pleases me. You know how I love to be admired. Or shunned. Whatever so long as I am getting attention, really.

Anyway, I had been patting myself on the back for our contribution to the environment (yes, you can definitely say we use more water, so it's not perfect. But somehow I feel more secure about NYC's water amounts than landfill space so I think it's the lesser evil around here), thinking more carefully about all the trash I throw away, thinking about how much trash there is and how it might continue to change the earth and what things will be like when Beck is a grown-up. We have our Nalgenes (poisonous, naturally) and avoid water bottles when we can. We try to be conscious of what we get rid of and of the materials we use for things like the renovation. I had been feeling like I was really doing my part.

And then came seltzer. I fell for it when I was pregnant and it's lingered on. I love it with the white hot passion of a thousand suns. I thought I loved water much more than the average person. But my love for water's bubbly cousin is far deeper. Poland Springs Raspberry Lime is my favorite. But plain is good too. Bubbles. Ensconced in plastic. Ugh. Back to the masses of plastic.

Then my friend gertielover, another seltzer addict, told me of the existence of seltzer machines. So now I know what I want for my birthday and I will be able to avoid using so many bottles. Problem solved. I felt good again. Responsible and eco-friendly.

And then came smoothies. These smoothies, to be exact. Ensconced in plastic. I had never wanted one, not being a huge yogurt fan, but they looked so lovely and drinkable. I bought one on a whim at Fairway and drank it down in one gulp as soon as I got in the car. Mmmmmm.... organic sugar. Yes, I could make my own smoothies. Wes does. But you know what they have in them? Fruit. I do not do fruit. Ask Charlotte. Heh. I like the vanilla ones but I guarantee you I could never make it taste like our friends at Stonyfield farms do. And so, I am back in plastic land.

Fortunately, my food phase personality means that I will grow sick of them in the near future and return to being smug.