Boobs and Poop

So it's been awhile. I've been busy and I've sort of gotten the hang of being a parent. Basically, I have resigned myself to the fact that I have no control over anything. But I do the best I can in spite of this. It's been really hard to think clearly. Not so much because of being a parent, or because I still feel like a newbie in this new town, but because I don't really have a good grasp on what's appropriate. I could blame the election of Donald Trump - and he's certainly a clear indicator of what I'm grasping at here - but I think it's more than that. Lately, I've been listening to NPR and watching Fox News. I've been contemplating growing more of our food and buying a clone so I can grow my own marijuana. I've also been shopping at Whole Foods and Nordstrom... I've been driving a Mercedes, and a Toyota Corolla. We live in Diamond Bar, but we rent a townhouse. We're white, but are we that white? The answer to the last q...

The owner (and unknowing recipient of my buried feces) from whom we rented a cabin  finally left her review : Nice little family! Kept to themselves the whole four days Could have taken more care not to scratch the wood floor when moving furniture around Apart from that, they were easy guests to host  July 2016 Phew! By the skin of our tushies, we got away with it.

I laugh at myself every time I consider the fact that we live in Diamond Bar . It's not just that it's so suburban, or that we're living this totally boring family-focused life here. In my early twenties, I worked for a British curling iron operation. I worked for the heavily-scrutinized North American division, where under the guidance of an over-eager salesman-turned-CEO I drove to Diamond Bar from Westlake once a month to conduct sales meetings. It was one of those "many hats" situations wherein it mattered not that I was the marketing coordinator, I was convinced that the health of our business depended on my driving 120 miles round trip to deliver a sales presentation to a group of rowdy hairstylists each month. I was too young to question any of this then. Anyhow, each month as my coworker and I made the long trek to Diamond I'd joke about having to travel to "Bumble F**k Egypt" for irrelevant meetings. To my mind, Diamond Bar was not a pla...

... a baby came out of my vagina! She's looking at me right now. She has teeth. She has a voice. She can take a few steps on her own before falling over. She is so awesome. She has completely stolen my heart and my identity. I am not the person I once was, and I have decided to acknowledge that this is a good thing. The person I once was was far unhappier than any one person deserves to be. She has taught me to be happier. She has also flipped my world up-side-down and inside-out. Words do not take on the same meaning... Insecurities run deeper, but my will to overcome is much stronger. I am so grateful I am her mom.

I got my own boarding pass! #spiritairlines #spirit #babyonaplane #flyingbaby #averybravery #averykatherine #thanksgiving #thanksgiving2015 A photo posted by Avery "Bumble" Brazell (@avery_bravery) on Nov 30, 2015 at 4:44pm PST Our little babe has been on 5 flights and has endured several long-distance drives in her short, 7-month life. She's also the champion of long, long car rides that should have been short car rides but weren't due to the heinous traffic conditions on the roads of greater Los Angeles . I would say we have managed to get her from Point A to Point B rather successfully every time we've taken her anywhere. Based on the number of times we failed to get ourselves from Point A to B as a childless couple, this was an exciting and somewhat shocking development for my husband and me. Before I dive into a bunch of unsolicited advice, I should remind you that I typically act like an insane person when I'm under any stress at all. Tra...

I've been having a rough couple of weeks... I've been feeling a little lost and a little insecure about this blog. I've been up in my own head and not on the keyboard. I have written regular posts, but I'm kind of forcing myself to "get it out there" so that I don't loose momentum. I've been hounding myself with the usual questions: What am I doing with my life? Was this decision to stay home, blog and work on passion projects (while raising my baby) the right one? Should I have gone back to an office, and should I take the baby to daycare? My daily routine (or lack thereof) is nothing like I might have imagined just a short year ago... Connecting with other mommy bloggers has surely helped! I think I needed some inspiration and motivation.  Talking with Leah from And 1 More Makes 3 has helped me refocus and feel excited about creating more (and different) posts. There is a lot going on with me that's left me feeling anxious about the pres...

Shaving my pubes always results in razor burn, ingrown hairs and stubble, plus an itchy and uncomfortable situation no matter what the undergarment or clothing choice.  But I've long been a routine and regular waxer.  For years, I got a full Brazilian wax every 4-5 weeks in order to keep the pubes away. I even kept up with this pubic hairstyle through the pregnancy. I, of course, took a break from waxing after the baby. Vaginal delivery and tearing, you know. I was terrified when I finally did muster up the courage to go back and get waxed. I wound up with a weird shape - a sort of hairy box around my outer labia with a thick landing strip on top. I was scared of the waxer going too close to anything that tore during delivery, so I kept insisting she leave a little more. It was getting awkward as she didn't like the idea of a customer leaving with a pube style quite like the one she'd created on me. This was probably 4 months after Bumble was born, and my...

I recently had the pleasure of “e-meeting” a fellow mommy blogger and kindred spirit. Leah, the creator of And1MoreMakes3.com , uses her blog as a platform to discuss mental health issues, using her own experiences as a springboard into the larger discussion of mental health for moms and others in the UK. Her tone is frank, open, approachable and light. She makes the topic of mental illness less scary by virtue of her attitude about it. She suffered from depression and anxiety for over 10 years, and now considers herself a “survivor.” Her blog is an extension of her own journey to mental wellbeing, as well as a platform for sharing with other people that it is ok to feel this way and to get help. By using her own journey as the example , she shows her readers the benefits of facing mental illness and fighting it. She helps remind those who have forgotten that there is hope, and it is possible to take control. There’s no shame in suffering a mental illness, or an invisib...

Watch Katharine Hepburn discuss atheism and morality. Historically, I haven't talked much about the fact that I am an atheist because this information has always been more important to the recipient than to me. Sharing my religious beliefs in conversation typically steers the conversation in one of two directions. One is invariably an attempt to change my mind on the subject through testimony; the other is an offense I didn't intend but can nevertheless not take back. I feel a little safer sharing my beliefs in this format, and the subject of religion has been on mind. I guess it's yet another on the list of things I didn't think mattered much... until I had a baby. My attitude about religion, the mystery of the unknown and morality ( Life, the Universe and Everything so to speak) will help shape hers. So here it is for the record: I don't believe in God or any gods. For a long time, I thought that this didn't matter in my daily life. And I didn'...

This image is taken from an article on Mapleleafmommy.com . What a weird day. It's baby girl's 1/2 birthday - she's 6 months old today. I'm delighted. She's having a blast and we celebrated with some new toys from Target. Another interesting rite of passage befell our happy home today - I was "let go" from a job for the first time in my life. I've been wanting to write about how hard it's been to go back to work. After the events of today, I'll now write a completely different post. I'd never even come close being fired before this morning. And typically, any bad news (especially concerning my employment) is met with fear, defensiveness or confusion. But today I happily received a very clear message. There's no bitterness or self-loathing here. I did a good job, but a local person may be better suited for the work. I was working remotely and from a different time zone - and due to the nature of the work, that put me at a di...

So we dove into feeding the baby formula because I wanted to quit pumping. I have quit pumping. I'm still nursing (more and even more frequently over this past week). This is because I think we dove into the formula too quickly. Baby girl's stomach was quite upset last week, and I think it's because we started feeding her up to 4 bottles of formula each day. We didn't take the expert advice of subbing one feeding for a bottle in a progression until she's weaned. I just stopped nursing her during the day, all of a sudden. Last Wednesday, baby girl threw up all over our nanny. All over her. I washed nanny's clothes and gave her an extra outfit to wear. Within minutes of changing, baby girl threw up on her again. I called the pediatrician and he said to go back to exclusively breastfeeding until the stomach issue cleared up. So back to breastfeeding I went, and it was like starting over on so many levels! I think I had allowed my milk supply to drop a teen...

This image was taken from this list of offensive memes on mommyish.com .  After 5 months of exclusive breastfeeding and refusing to give the baby formula, I decided to bottle feed her formula last Saturday. It was weird, and I liked it. My husband was surprised and told me that from his perspective it seemed like I just flipped a switch, all of a sudden. Even when I got really sick two weeks ago and should have been on serious antibiotics, I just felt weird about introducing her to formula. But for some reason on Saturday morning, I was on fire and ready to try it. I mean I'd been thinking about it - mainly because now that I've been working again, I want to drink coffee all day. I've been so so so sick of having one measly cup of coffee in the morning and then worrying about my caffeine intake throughout the day. And now that our baby is sleeping like a champ most nights, I want to have wine with my husband on the back patio and enjoy my guiltiest of pleasures, an...

I am still processing all that happened and how much I (and everything around me) changed last year. 2015 was by far the craziest year of my life. It was so so so hard, but I was so excited about so much of it. I was miserable and elated at the same time for most of the year. I still don't think I'm ready to write about it... I'm not really ready to let the year go. But I'm also stoked to leave the discomfort and stress of pregnancy, family-full wedding events and actually giving birth far behind me. So with ambivalence I present this list of 20 major life events that occurred in 2015. Perhaps you'll instantly understand why I can't yet write about any of it... and why I have to acknowledge all of it, now. I started the year ~8 weeks pregnant. My Bachelorette Party weekend was in January (and I was obviously pregnant for it). In February, I backed my car into a parked truck and caused about $2,500 worth of damage to the trunk of my car.  My beautiful ...

There's no question that attitudes about marijuana use are changing due to increased accessibility to medicinal and recreational cannabis, and a general disinterest in the subject from the federal government. So I assumed that there would be a lot of debate surrounding pot smoking and pregnancy, nursing and parenting. I was correct on two fronts. I have come across a lot of interesting information and opinions about smoking pot during pregnancy and/or as a parent. Brave souls ( like Kiri Westby  and Toni Nagy  via the Huffington Post) started the public discussion about responsible parenting and recreational marijuana a couple of years ago. But it's been very challenging to find any conclusive information about the potential effects of marijuana use on a breastfeeding mom and/or her baby. Everyone agrees that trace amounts of THC may or do make their way into breast milk. But more research is needed to determine the potential impact on a nursing baby. The most compreh...

Some may be surprised that I decided to write about this. It's personal stuff. But after a lot of thought, I decided to share anyway because I found something really beneficial to my health. Anyone who knows me really well knows that I have struggled with anxiety and depression at different times throughout my life. Anyone who sort of knows me has probably heard me talk about this and been surprised. You may fall into that second category now. I'm naturally a fairly nervous person. What may seem very small and insignificant things to some can send me into a tailspin. I may worry over a mistake on a work project or something stupid I said at a party for weeks after the incident. I get stomach aches when this happens. I give just as much attention to worrying about the future as I do the past, and it results in even more stomach aches. In my late twenties, I was pretty sick of feeling sick to my stomach from all this worrying all the time. So I started seeing a therapis...