Sunday, June 24, 2018

Ice Pops! (A Fun Summer Recipe)

Namastè!

It's HOTTTTTTTT.

Seriously.

The sun is teabagging Georgia. *chuckle*

Because I can't stay in the Tayè Cave all summer, I decided to pull out some of my favorite standbys for staying cool. One of those is the classic ice pop.

While most people just freeze whatever juice they have available, I like to go a bit more festive with ours.

What's abundant during summertime,  besides sunshine and warm days?

Fruit!

Today my sweet Brother Bear (ah, can't I just call him Baby Namastè still?! Never mind we have another baby who's actually still a baby...I wasn't ready for him to grow into a toddler yet!) had the time of his life riding his trike. Because it's super warm, I figured this would be a good day to introduce him to one of my favorite things.

To make our version of ice pops, all you need is:

☆ An ice pop tray (We got ours at Walmart for a dollar and it holds 8 pops!)
☆ 2 cups fresh fruit (We recently had strawberries and cherries!)
☆ 1 quick dash of lemon juice
☆ blender or food chopper

(For variety, we sometimes add: almond milk, coconut milk, shredded coconut, pieces of dried fruit for texture [only for older toddlers and up!], coffee [for my latte pops lol--no kids allowed], vanilla chips, chocolate chips...go wild!)

I don't add sugar to ours, but you can of course.

Taste your fruit to be sure it is sweet--I like to use the sweeter bits for ice pops so I could skip the sugar. Blend the fruit til it's pureed.

Stir in your add-ins.

Once everything is mixed, pour it into your ice pop tray.

I sit our tray on a cookie sheet and put it in the deep freeze for at least two hours.

Then...we eat. There's a pic of my little Big Brother Bear on FB, enjoying his trike and ice pop.

Namastè!

-- Tayè K.

Age Differences...

...can really suck.

The summer has settled upon us and I'm now juggling three schedules. Which isn't an impossibility--it keeps things interesting and leaves little time for tantrums. (Mine or theirs.)

The issue, if we can call it that?

There's no way to really merge the activities of a tween, a toddler, and a nursling. The tween could care less about tot soccer,  the toddler is allergic to naps, and the nursling is only interested in nursing and refuses to borrow a flip to give about dance or soccer or any of that jazz.

...which brings us to the parents, who lovingly (and by lovingly I mean, "We paid for this so we may as well smile and enjoy too!") chauffeur the gas-moneyless kids to and fro.

I kid about gas money.

They can't afford to fill that tank. *chuckles* They're broke.

But in all reality, while I do love letting them have their respective sports and hobbies, I do kinda wish they had one together too.

While that seems crazy, look at it this way--our tween will be 12 this year. Which means when the toddler is a great big almost-out-of-elementary kid and the nursling is a kindergartener, the tween will be old enough to vote, drive, and take the garage apartment. 

Admittedly we don't push the whole move out thing...most days, anyway. At 18 I was honestly only barely ready to decide my own dinner, let alone my own life. While I survived and did pretty well, I won't necessarily push my little birds out the nest so soon.

But back to the age difference...the tween has a whole 9.5 years between her and her little siblings. She doesn't exactly bond with them over music and common interests because, well, there aren't many. She is much closer to our nieces and nephews, who are closer to her age. Which we don't begrudge at all, because she definitely loves the two smallest bears. She's a wonderful big sister. The years are there and can't be ignored, though.

The main thing they share is parents.

We take pride in annoying them all equally, by the way. It's a tough and thankless job but darn it, we signed up for it and boy do we dee-li-vah. (Deliver, sheesh.)

So while they're all developing their separate things, it makes me wish they had one together. *sighs* I understand my own timing as far as their birth order, and I wouldn't dare change it, but at the same time I catch myself imagining if they were a bit closer in age.

But then again, my tween takes hours in the bathroom and currently takes great pride in stealing my clothes. (Either I'm a short adult or she's a tall 11...at any rate, she's already 5'4 and rising.)

We should probably start a band or something before she (the tween) deems us too uncool to be spotted with in public. Can't you see it? We'd have this epic tour bus and everything.

No?

Well, now you're acting like the kids. *scoffs*

PPD

Post-partum depression.

It's more than occasional tears or random bouts of sadness.

No.

It goes deeper.

It's utter hopelessness. It's emptiness. It's the ability (?!) to look beyond every blessing,  every positive, every comfort  to see the nothingness on the other side. It's looking at your new baby and wondering how you will ever manage to keep them alive, let alone happy, because you certainly cannot manage to feel alive or happy yourself.

Women with PPD are horribly undertreated.

Because it is an emotional problem that crops up after one of the most physically and emotionally draining events a person can experience, PPD symptoms are typically swept away in the files of postpartum discomforts. After all, childbirth is hell. Nobody goes through something that major completely unscathed.

So until a major breakdown occurs, women are either over medicated, under treated, or simply told that it will all pass.

Should she dare speak about her symptoms--the sweeping despair, the inability to get out of bed, the desire to be anywhere but where she is--she's reminded of her precious new baby and how blessed she is. She's told to cheer up. She's given a quick hug and assured she isn't alone.

But she is--because when a person does not seek to understand you, there is no way they can ever really be there for you. They can give only surface comfort. A bandaid to a bullet hole.

See, depression isn't a flesh wound--it's a wide, gaping hole. Postpartum depression is that same gaping hope with the added sting of guilt.

You just had a baby. You're a mom now! Why are you sitting here staring off into space? Why doesn't that baby fill you with joy?

The thing is, that baby probably does fill you with joy. You're just so clouded with grief (yes, depression does this--you will alternate between grieving your normalcy and grieving the emptiness gnawing at you now) that joy is a distant cousin who simply doesn't visit you much.

When a celebrity speaks about PPD, they are brave. They're showered with affection and positivity. They're reminded how strong they are and how much the world needs their particular light. "Hold on! Stay strong. You're so brave for telling the truth and getting some help."

When a regular Jane speaks?

Her Facebook statuses are ignored--they're too sad. She's attention-seeking. Her visitors dry up, because no one wants or is comfortable to sit with a sad sack very much. Invites out don't happen because when she can't drag herself out of bed, she's deemed antisocial; when she can, again, who wants to he around a sad sack?!

It's a lonely condition.

Her doctor might give her pills. 

Or they might call DFCS.

Being honest about depression is a mine field--on one hand, the doctor might be very understanding and offer counseling, medication, therapy, or a combination thereof to help her bridge from existing to finally being alive. They might even

On the other hand, the doctor may deem her a risk to herself and her kids. She may be sent to a mental treatment center against her will, with social workers swooping in to divide and delegate childcare.

...but generally she'll fall somewhere in the middle. Far too many OB/GYNs are not well versed in spotting PPD, and even fewer understand that the treatment must be more than, "take two of these and call me in the morning." As a result, unless the woman can afford top-notch doctors or muster enough energy to raise a holy enough stink for her own doctor to take her seriously (which, let's be blunt--completely and utterly sucks that this is even a possible scenario), she will dance frantically on the line between surviving another day and caving in to the despair she lugs around every waking moment.

Friends disappear.

Family keeps their distance.

She's stuck with herself.

Only herself.

...at least, it can feel that way. When a person lacks the energy to entertain, the average person either does entirely too much or flatly not enough. Forcing them to talk is bad. Ignoring their voice is also inherently bad.

There's no way to tell which is which, because depression changes a person to the point that who they were is moot to who they are in this moment. They aren't the same and can't really be handled the same.

A strong one will crumble. One usually full of laughter will brim over with tears at the slightest. The life of the party shrinks away into a wallflower in the smallest corner.