Three-Posts-In-One

Post I: Habemus Papam!

I would not normally have used this phrase as a post title, but it seemed to go well with my next one, which I started a few days ago, before we had a new pope.

Which, we now have!

It was a day of great excitement in the Catholic world and in our house today! We plugged ourselves into the hotspot with the laptop and watched the live coverage of it on EWTN. Anja was VERY into it, while Greta mostly whined "I wish we were watching Aristocats instead." Haha. Maybe she'll appreciate it next time a new pope is elected!

Our new pope chose the name Francis, which, as you might recall, has been our "boy name" for all three of our children. I love St. Francis (of Assisi.) I have loved him since 6th grade when I first saw "Brother Sun, Sister Moon." (Go ahead and laugh!) I've always felt our little family to have a closeness to St. Francis. I love that St. Francis lived a life of simplicity and peace and love. I think he's the patron saint of hippies, but I'd have to look it up. (kidding.) Really though, all of the things he stood for in his life are things that we try, as a little family, to follow. Martin and I are not much into loud, public evangelization. We more choose the style of living the faith, and hoping that we bring people to the church that way. I try to keep in mind the simplicity of St. Francis and his life (okay, I don't go quite as far as he did, but I try to keep that spirit) in our own daily family life.

Pope Francis seems to have a sweetness about him that I think the whole world needs. He calls for brotherhood, something the world needs. On facebook, a friend posted something that said "He is going to remind us how much we all love Jesus together." I think that childlike approach to our faith is so important! We as people get so worked up! We get so haughty! We get so mean! We need to a little more love and a little more sweetness and humility. We all could be more like St. Francis.

Plus, I really like animals.

Anyway, I'm so happy with our new pope! Part of that also might have something to do with being more involved in it this time--when Benedict was elected everyone was still sad that JPII had died. I was just a single girl and I found out about it just by my mom calling me at work and telling me. Not really very exciting. Today, with the help of social media, it was so exciting! So fun! I loved sharing it with.... well, with Anja. While Greta was hollering about wanting to watch Aristocats. But anyway, I hope that Anja will always have at least a little snippet of memory of this day. Maybe she'll at least remember the celebratory pizza party we had up at my parents house later!!

Now, let us leave the Catholic world for our religious roots, featured in my next post topic:

Post II: Shalom Aleichem!

(And that's as far as the Jewishness of this post goes. I am kind of in love with Jewish culture, but this post topic isn't really about that... it's about a sweater.)

I think I've mentioned on here that Martin is currently enrolled in grad school. He's in his first semester working toward a masters degree in library science. This is a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is that it's a degree that will hopefully enable him to get better jobs in the future. The bad thing is that it takes up pretty much every ounce of free time he would otherwise have... which isn't really much, considering he has a full time job, three very small children and two needy dogs who need to be walked at least twice a day (darn you, jumpable fence!)

But there's this secret good thing that comes from him being in school: while he is slaving away every evening getting his assignments done, I am having some super productive time with my knitting needles. I've have made multiple hats, some toys and a sweater since he started school in January and I'm working on a shawl! Nevermind that that timeslot runs us until the wee hours of the morning every day.... who needs sleep, right?

The purple hat Elka is wearing in that middle picture on my last post was the one I knit for her (the free soulemama pattern on her blog--I made it smaller than the child-sized one, I *think* I cast on 42 stitches) and here is the one I made for myself:

(photo by anja)

I really love it and I wear it all the time! Which is great, because I've knit myself a lot of hats over the years and I wear most of them, oh, never.

And here is another item I may or may not end up wearing often... the Shalom Cardigan! A free pattern from Ravelry (I can't remember who created it!) I think I like it. But it does fit a little funny, mainly in the sleeves. Now, I was warned about this, but instead of following the advice and alterations I was given, i chose to work the pattern pretty much as it was written (I did take a number of rows out of the body and it still came out longer than I would have preferred) and so the sleeves are kind of.... well, I don't know how to explain it. It's just a very shawl-like sweater with really big arm holes. Feel free to tell me what you think in the comments. Since I used Cascade Eco-Wool for it and it only took one skein, I'm only out twenty bucks. I think I'm going to make it again a tad bit smaller.

 Now, you might be thinking "why did Annie post such a dorky looking picture of herself?" or,  "She could certainly work on improving her posture!" But before you judge, I'd like you to take note of the person in the background. Yeah, that guy across the street. Wandering around at 7:45 on a Saturday morning. He provides for the the perfect segue into my next post topic!, which is:

Post III: GET ME THE H-E-DOUBLEHOCKEYSTICKS OUT OF HERE!

Remember all that stuff I said at the beginning of this post about St. Francis, and living a life of peace and love, for everyone? Yeah, just forget I said that for awhile.

So, sometimes I love my house. Really, I love it. I love our bedroom with it's slanty ceilings and goofy closet that always smells good. I love the green painted wooden floor on the landing and the painted stairs.  I love my pretty upstairs bathroom and I love the wood floors in my front room. I love the way the sun comes through my kitchen window right at the time of day when I'm needing some motivation to be in the kitchen to make dinner for my family. I love the crown molding in my front room and the brightness of that room with it's powder blue walls. I love that after five years I have a place for every Christmas decoration. I love all these things!

But then there are things I hate about this place. Like actually LIVING here. Things I hate include:
The noise.
The neighborhood.
The people in the neighborhood.
The people who are always screaming at each other in the neighborhood.
The fact that Anja wants to move to the country because one of her little friends told her about wishing on stars and she can't see any here in the city.
The neighborhood. (oh, did I already say that one?)
Calling Martin on the phone to talk about an article he emailed me about keeping sheep, only to say "oh, sorry, I have to call the police, some homeless guy is trying to get into our house. AGAIN."

Okay, so it didn't happen exactly like that, it was more like this:
Me: "Um... somebody's trying to get in the house."
Martin: "Who is it?? Get a gun!"
Me: "I dunno, it's some guy with a blue sock cap and a backpack."
Martin: "Get a gun! Call the police!"
Me: "What gun?"
Martin: "You need to call the police. Is he really trying to come in?"
Me: "Not really... he's just at the mud room door. He was wandering around in the sideyard and now he's at that door. The dogs are barking at him, it's okay."
Martin: "Get a gun! Call the police!"
Me: "It's okay. What gun? This big one?"
Martin: "ANY GUN! CALL THE POLICE!"
Me: "Oh, I think he went to the front of the house, hang on. It's okay."
Martin: "I'm coming home."
Me: "No, no, don't be silly. We're fine. I have this...which gun did you say it was? Where is it?"
Martin: "CALL THE POLICE!!!"

By the time I got back to the front of the house, the guy was on the sidewalk talking to a policeman. (I don't know who called the police, but it wasn't me.) They talked for a long time and then the guy disappeared and the policeman stuck around awhile. Then the neighbor came home and the policeman talked to her, so after he left, I zipped over to talk to her and evidently the guy was a schizophrenic who didn't have a violent history, but who wasn't doing well and was going door-to-door allegedly trying to sell "something." He didn't have a sales license, and the policeman said if he came around again to call them and they would take care of it.

And I'm not sure he was actually trying to get into our house, but the fact that I saw him wandering around at the side of our house (our house is very long and stretches waaaaay back to the alley) and that he was almost in our backyard made me think he was kind of up to no good. (I mean, we DO have a front door. And a kitchen door. Our house is very long and we have a lot of doors.)

And I'm sure he would not have hurt us if he had come into our house. But I would have had to get him out again. And frankly, I just feel like that shouldn't be something I have to worry about regularly.... you know, getting mentally ill people out of my house in the middle of the morning.

Oh, did I mention this isn't the first time someone's tried to get into our house? The last guy was drunk. We still see him around a lot. I'm sure I've blogged about him before. I'm sure I also blogged about the time the drunk guy walked into my sister's house (when I lived there, but I wasn't home.) He just walked right in, through the backyard and into my apartment. She told him to leave, and he did... but then he tried to come in the front door..... anyway, you get the picture. She lives just a few blocks away from me.

This all sounds very judgemental, I know. I need to show more compassion and love for these people. And you know, I feel like I did, before I had three kids. Before my thought was, "someone wants to get into our house. The baby is sleeping, Greta's naked, Anja's in her pajamas. What do I do?" But right now, this just is not where I want to be raising my kids. When I was single, the people of the neighborhood were good for interesting stories. Now I've got kids. Now I'm a mama bear.

And so, Martin has started applying to jobs that might take us farther away, to places where we can see the stars, have lots of barn cats, some sheep, some chickens. To places where my kids can run and I won't have to worry about them falling on a dirty needle. Where they can play without being stared at by some creep-o across the street. Where the outside air is actually fresher than the inside air, and not just full of bus fumes. Hopefully something will pan out. We will just have to wait and see!

Let's get back to peace and love to end this post. Let's end with a little Elka! :

Knitting and Dancers and Crackers OH MY!

 greta, elka, anja

 greta, fixing me tea

 elka, in the car

 a hat for elka

this one anja took! it's called "my mama loves to knit"

 best crackers ever

anja at night

For those of you who have iphones, you probably have already figured this out, but OHMYGOSH, the iPhone camera is incredible! I even have a really nice camera, but the iPhone takes great pictures. Clear, with good focus and nice light. Now, I am by no means a photographer--not even in the slightest sense. I like taking pictures, and I like making my silly snapshots more fun on Instagram. But I am continually surprised by the quality of shot I can get with my phone. MY PHONE!!!! Wild.

Anja and Greta are taking a ballet class now. It's a class for 3 1/2-5 year olds and it is THE cutest thing I've ever seen. There are maybe 9 little girls in the class, most are 5 year olds, but they all wear the same tutus and tights and little shoes, and they all have their long, stringy 5 year old hair pulled back in ponytails and they all spend at least one small portion of the class looking around like they are confused by the idea of putting your arms in the air at an angle. (The teacher puts her arms up like a V, and all the little girls just put their arms straight up in the air, pressed against their ears. They just don't get it. It's so adorable.)

Martin's chugging along through grad school and I'm chugging right alongside him with my knitting. Haha. It's a little bit like when he worked his overnight job and I would stay up all night knitting. I made multiple sweaters during that time. I'm working on a "shalom cardigan" for myself right now, I've made a lot of hats and I'm making a "lark rise to candleford shawl" that I think will end up being exactly what I want.

We've been looking at houses and being continuously disappointed. In the past year we've made offers on three different houses and all of them have fallen through for different reasons. It's VERY frustrating. I told my friend Laura the other day, it's kind of like when you're single and you break it off with another boyfriend.... you don't really care about letting that one go because, clearly, he wasn't the one. But, OHMYGOLLY, when is the right one going to come along?!?! WHAT'S THE HOLDUP!?!? (This makes it sound like I've had a lot of boyfriends. That isn't true, but it is true that I was never too upset to see any of them go!) We know what we want and hope it's in our future soon. Until then, we'll just keep on waiting and checking in on realtor.com.

I am a boring person. Our evening is beginning now though.... so it's time to make a pot of coffee. Num num.

Change Happens

On Friday morning the girls and I drove up the hill to St. Mary's School and officially registered Anja for half day morning kindergarten. I'm not feeling especially sentimental (yet) about the fact that my oldest baby is going to be heading off to school in the fall, but at the same time I AM feeling sentimental about the fact that she is no longer, in any way, shape or form, a baby.

For one thing, she has completely sprouted in height. She and Greta spent a long time being roughly the same size, but suddenly Anja is an entire head taller than Greta! She's leaned out too--you might remember that she was quite the chunk of a baby... and toddler... and three year old... But she's not like that anymore. Now she's all tall and skinny and her face isn't round anymore; it's a very delicate and feminine heart shape. She's taken to wearing her hair in braids every day instead of double knots, which somehow seems more school girlish and less toddlerish. It's a funny thing... she's trekking her way through her 5th year of life and is most definitely a Big Kid.

Greta, meanwhile, has made a giant leap through the final ring of the "Throw-Me-Out-the-Window-I'm-Begging-You Three's." I'm telling you, these past few months have been BAD. Like, "I don't know what to do with Greta, she's ruining our family's life" bad. And even though I laughed heartily at all the ridiculous things other people's three-year-olds were doing because they were excactly like my life (go ahead and google "46 reasons my three year old might be freaking out,") everything that was happening with Greta seemed to be constant. CONSTANT screaming. CONSTANT freaking out. CONSTANT emotional instability.

And then one day everything magically changed.

I blame the mantel.

Every year at Christmas we bring out this fake mantel/fireplace thing that was in our house when we moved in. It's totally pretend, but handmade... and it's a little bit goofy and cheesy, but it's a little bit charming at the same time, not to mention the only place to hang our stockings, since we don't have a real fireplace. So every year we move our furniture around and drag this big thing up from the Big Back Room and decorate it and take Christmas pictures in front of it, blah blah blah. It's usually the last thing that gets put away, long after becoming victim of AnotherFlatSurfaceToFill Syndrome, sometime around Valentine's Day. In our case, it happened two or three Saturdays ago, when Greta (who'd had a rough and tantrum-filled morning) mentioned that she missed her little rocking chair, and asked us to take the mantel away and bring that rocking chair back up. So, we did.

And ever since then, Greta has been completely normal.

It's the oddest, most remarkable thing! And it's WONDERFUL. There are no more outrageous fits about events happening out of order. She is able to leave the house on time without deciding to change her clothes fifteen times as we're trying to walk out the door. If her socks are "wrong" she only cries a little bit before deciding that our idea to change socks to ones that fit might be a good idea after all. She hasn't cried about her baths being too wet since that day. It's like she's become a four year old a couple of months early!

Well... almost. This morning I did accidentally put peanut butter on the wrong slice of toast and had to make her a new piece..... but the crying from that one event didn't last all day long. It didn't snowball into Greta hating the world. We still have bumps in our daily life, but that's all they are now--bumps. They are not occurrences that make me think I'd rather be thrown into a fiery pit full of vipers wearing flame resistent pajamas.  It's nice! Really nice.

And Elka. Elka has two teeth now. Elka is "cruising" still and trying out the stairs. She's pretty much mastered the one step at my parents' house... she likes to go up and down over and over and so far she has NOT fallen on her face. Not even once! She weighs over 20 pounds now. She's a pretty great baby. I'm looking forward to her walking because I feel like babies get to really show off their wardrobes once they become walkers!

Martin is working his way through his first semester of grad school, moving toward a degree in Library Science. Martin was the librarian at our highschool when we were dating and engaged, and I feel like he'd make a really good "real" librarian. Our evenings have been super cozy, with him doing school work and me knitting. I'm almost finished with a sweater called "australorp" which turned out to be a pretty fitting name. Australorp is breed of chicken, and this sweater turned out to be shaped pretty much like a chicken. It was awful. So I cut it, in a shaped form, up both sides and sewed it back together on my sewing machine. Then I decided to knit the sleeves... and I've got one done, and I'm having the hardest time working up any motivation to make the second sleeve. This sweater is just.... well, it's just not the best. So I'm working my way through a quick baby sweater for Elka (which I know will be cute because I've made it once before) and have plans to make a Shalom Cardigan next.

And last but not least... we are contemplating some Major Life Changes. A great simplification. A downsize of mammoth proportions. We haven't made a final decision, but....... well, we'll just see what happens.

So, there are big changes happening around these parts in all the corners of our life! Most all of them very good, with the exception of Elka's pesky 6pm nap that has popped into her daily schedule, making bedtime later than I would prefer. (I say this as she sleeps in my lap RIGHT NOW.)

I really like February. It's the month when every once in awhile you can smell that Spring is coming.

Three's Insanity

 

 

When we were embarking on the Big Event of Having Three Children (can you tell I read a lot of A.A. Milne?) people warned us, "Watch out! Three is CRAZY!" and I believed them and I worried a little bit. But then the little bundle of joy who is our Elkaberry came into our lives and we spent one of the best summers we've ever had in full adoration of her and each day that passed by seemed to be one of relaxation, contentment, and for lack of a better word, "bliss."

 

It really was that great. Partly because it was summer (and even an extraordinary summer where it almost never rained!) and partly because Elka was Wonder Baby who slept well, ate well, and wasn't much bothered by anything. It was definitely a great summer and I thought to myself, "what were those people thinking? Three is not crazy! Three is perfect! Three is (omg why did I even think this) EASY!"

 

Heh.

 

Riiiiiight. "Easy," I said.

 

 

 

The reality of the situation is that three is INSANITY. Two preschoolers and a newborn was easy. Easy beyond belief. But two preschoolers and The Baby Who Will Conquer the World?!? It's crazy. It's impossible. It is..... I don't even have words. It's just crazy!!!!

 

Let me tell you a little bit about Elka and her latest antics. Elka began the early stages of crawling, you might remember, at 4 1/2 months. She was fully mobile by 5 months, able to get to whatever it was she wanted. Now Elka is 7 months old and she is practicing standing up on her own. She's not really very good at it, but she WANTS to be and she spends most of her time trying to climb things. She can pull to a stand using anything. To make things more exciting, she puts anything she finds in her mouth. Buttons. Beans. String. Dog hair. Blueberry muffin crumbs. SHE EATS EVERYTHING. And she's really, really fast. So I can take something out of her mouth, walk (more like jog) to the next room to throw it away, come back and she's got something else in her mouth. She broke two teapots on two different occasions in one day. She got up to one of our lower tables and somehow got the box of watercolor paints and was mouthing the whole container. Nothing on the floor is safe and there's no way, with two older ones, to keep everything off the floor at all times. It's just impossible.

 

So, basically, it's not safe to leave Elka unattended for any period of time. Sometimes I can gain a few minutes of washing dishes by closing the doors to the bathroom and playroom and she can crawl up and down the little hallway by the kitchen for awhile. But my laundry room is not fit for children, so I'm pretty behind on that chore. It doesn't help that she's kind of stopped napping. Today her total naps barely added up to more than an hour.

 

So, today, when I put the milk jug away in the pantry instead of  refrigerator, I thought, "I'm not surprised. They were right. Three is crazy. It's time to make a blog post."

 

In other news, Anja got a camera for her birthday in November and we just got the cord to put all of her photos on the computer. This is one of them:

 

This was one of the first ones. She's a pretty good little photographer, but since her birthday she's taken 487 photos, so I didn't really have time to go through them and find the best ones. Some of them are more "artistic" (she's got a whole bunch of one lamp she thinks is really beautiful) but she's taken a lot of really good ones of Elka. And she has since learned to keep her fingers out of the way, lol.

Oh, and as you can see, I am magically able to post pictures again!

I had mentioned on here the possibility of us buying a particular house. That deal fell through. Without going into great detail, there was more wrong with the place than we could afford. It was sad to let it go, but in the end, there were so many problems that it became utterly undoable. (I thought that was a word, but it's spell checking me with no suggestions.) What looked like a gem was actually a money pit. It was a charming little farmhouse on a great little plot of land. But what you can't afford, you can't afford.

Well, I'm a firm believer in whatever is meant to happen will, so I can't get too wrapped up in it. Perhaps there is another place for us somewhere.

Next week we register Anja for kindergarten. That's kind of unbelievable. She's moving from "preschool" to "school age." How did this happen?

SO Annoying

*Note: I'm probably going to switch my blog over to Wordpress soon. Blogger is failing me--I think they are wanting to me to upgrade to Google+ or something like that, and I just don't want to do it. So until that time, I'm not able to put pictures on my blog. Pretty sad... but like I said, hopefully I'll be switching over to WordPress soon, with an entirely fresh, new blog. (We're also hopefully moving soon. See the connection there?)

So, when I was in highschool it was a little bit of a dinner table joke with my parents and me about the fact that I thought everyone and everything I ever came in contact with was SO ANNOYING. Every homework assignment, every teacher, every classmate, every time I put fifty cents into the pop machine and the damn thing didn't give me my cherry coke... EVERYTHING.

So, it won't surprise my parents when they read this that I'm about to talk about something that I found to be very ANNOYING.

But it might surprise them to hear that I'm really working on this! I've been trying, since I now consider myself to be mostly a grownup, to see things from other people's viewpoints and to understand that not everyone lives the same life as I do, and that something that is a certain way for me may not be that same way for everyone else in the world. (I know, I know, this is obvious... but it's hard to remember sometimes.)

So, I read (that's the past-tense word. I am not currently reading much of anything these days, not even blogs) a few different craft blogs as I got into crafting and being a mom and all the homemakey stuff that people like me get into when suddenly they find themselves spending their entire life at home with small children. Some of them I still read (okay, ONE of them, and it's Soulemama, and I only read her about once a week) and the others (some of which are listed on my sidebar) I haven't read in six months or more. I just don't have time for it anymore, to be honest. All this computer stuff. I can check Facebook because it's in my pocket, but even that I've gone to mostly just looking through it once a day other than popping on to see if I have any messages or notifications. I do love Instagram though.

Anyway, back to blogs. One of the blogs I read is Sew Liberated. I really like her blog, and I have her first book and I drool a little bit every time I see her second book because I really, really want it. I like her stuff! But her blog started getting a little.... glum. She fell into some hard times and she got a little more complainy a little more often and then she started fitting in some political jabs here and there and I decided that, even if I could empathize with her or sympathize, or whatever ize I could do, it was kind of dragging down my daily morale while simultaneously raising my blood pressure every morning. (I used to read the blogs in the morning before the girls woke up. Since I've had three, things are not so simple. It was a nice routine while it lasted!)

Anyway, I got to thinking about her blog this morning for some reason. And I was remembering it and I was thinking, you know, maybe I was being a little too harsh. Maybe I was being a little judgemental. Everyone is so sensitive about political views, maybe I just was rubbed the wrong way and need to give her another chance. So I looked up her blog while I was making dinner, and the very most recent post was an apology that she had been gone so long because she was having a difficult time adjusting to being a "full time stay-at-home mom" And then there was this excerpt:

For now, in the few mornings a week when the boys are cared for by my parents, I tend to my pattern business. Management stuff. Emails. In short, not soul-quenching work.

FEW MORNINGS A WEEK!?  A few mornings a week are not enough time for her?!?!  Does she realize that MOST stay-at-home moms get a daily naptime and that's IT for "personal nourishment" as she called it? Does she realize that most stay at home moms would take any kind of work, if it meant being able to do it in quietness without someone climbing on her, wiping their nose on your shirt (I actually have implemented a rule that they can't wipe their nose on my shirts on Sundays because I like to keep clean on that day. They've been very receptive!) or actively sucking calories from your bosom (and repeatedly slapping you in the face all through that meal)?!?!?!

You know what I did yesterday? I locked the bathroom door for the first time all week and I stayed in there awhile longer than was actually necessary, because I knew the girls were ok with Martin and I hadn't been alone in a long time. And I just stood in there and enjoyed the quiet. Because I'm the kind of stay-at-home mom who doesn't get "a few mornings a week" to myself. I have to lock myself in the bathroom to get that time.

Now, I'm not trying to sound bitter. If I so much as run out to the grocery store by myself sometimes I hear a baby cry in the next aisle and I get a little emotional and go home with only half the groceries because I miss my babies. (true story.) I LIKE staying home with my kids all the time. In fact, I LOVE IT. That's why I do it. I'll admit that it gets difficult when you start to forget if you're a human or a Kleenex. It gets difficult when your three year old calls down the stairs "my pajamas are dirty all the way! They're dirty all the way! They're dirty all the way! They're dirty all the way! etc." because she found a hair on her foot and you have to go up and lint roll her all over because of one tiny dog hair. It gets difficult when your six month old is super baby who can get anywhere in the blink of an eye and eat every choking hazard she can find along the way.

I guess my point is that NOBODY has time for self nourishment. You have to find it and piece it together. Sometimes I forget that when Martin leaves for work in the morning he's not just going to a coffee shop to hang out all day. He's going to work, where he's really busy all day long and doesn't usually take a lunch break and when he does it's often to run errands for me or for our house searching, or often he will come home to help me during his lunch break. That's not self-nourishment in the sense of "me-time." It's knowing you're doing the right thing. It's doing things out of love.  It's finding self-nourishment in the every day activities of life and doing things for others. It's not a freaking day at the spa.

And I know, I KNOW that we all DO need those times. And I get those times, and Martin gets those times and I hope that all stay-at-home moms (and working moms, and dads, and single over-worked people) get some times that are truly for their own rejuvenation. I know that it's so, so important to get that time and that if you don't, you might totally lose it. You come back from me-time feeling refreshed, reenergized, ready to go, with a recharged love for your stay-at-home (or whatever you do) vocation.

But holy toledo, do you really want a spa day every time?

Some stay at home moms get part time jobs. Some join a church choir. Or a social club. Or a charity group. My grandma spent her Me-Time taking meals to poor and lonely people. My mom played the electric bass in the church folk group (heh heh heh.) And all the other little loves and joys and hobbies were worked into the daily grind. A little sewing project here while the kids are doing a puzzle. Read a few lines of your books while you're waiting for the macaroni water to boil. Knit a few rows before the timer on the dryer buzzes. Or better yet, do those hobbies WITH your kids. Anja has all of a sudden decided she'd like to hand sew. (I think this was inspired by her cousin Angelica who made her an adorable little stuffed fox set for Christmas, which she had sewn entirely by herself, and which Anja LOVES.) So we've been cutting out hearts from pretty fabric and she's been stitching around the edges and then embroidering the inside. She loves it! And while she was doing that and Greta was off on her own coloring or drawing and Elka was just playing on the floor (eating things) I was able to knit a little bit on my sock. And it wasn't long before the moment ended, but we all founda little bit of me-time in that moment. We were just all together when we found it.

Anyway, the post rubbed me the wrong way. In a big way.

And then I thought to myself, "you know, I've been doing this stay-at-home mom thing for more than five years. Maybe I've just had more time to figure out that you don't get much time to yourself in this gig. Maybe she just needs a little time to find that out for herself." And she DOES have a hard life--her little baby boy was born with serious heart problems and she runs this entire business and I don't really know what her husband does... anyway, it's true that she is WAY busier and WAY more stressed out than I am by life. But STILL.

From the viewpoint of a regular, in the trenches, stay at home mom... MAN, that comment was annoying.

Happy Stinksmas

I really want to begin this blog post by simply saying

OMG.

I'm pretty sure this holiday season will go down as the crappiest in our family's history. Thankfully, Christmas itself was okay, even if Martin and I were never quite feeling in the Christmas spirit, at least nobody was actively sick on that day. Well, if you exclude my sister and me. But the kids were well.

Now NOBODY is well. And we haven't been since LAST WEDNESDAY. (I'm writing this on Thursday night. That's MORE THAN A WEEK.) More than a week of fevers and coughs and sore throats and goopy, gunky, uncomfortable eyes. More than a week of full sinuses and coughing till we throw up (only Elka, to be fair) and missing out on seeing people and doing things and more than a week of not leaving the house and more than a week of screaming, crying, uncomfortable, sad, sick kids.

BLAH.

Let's go back to pre-Christmas and talk about the lack of Christmas Spirit around this place. I'll begin by reminding you how completely awesome in every single possible way last Advent and Christmas were. Last Advent was the most joyful time of anticipation I've ever experienced in my life. When I remember that, it makes it easier to see that this year never had a chance, really. We tried to do a good job of keeping up the anticipation, the joy of looking toward Christmas for all the right reasons. And we did have some fun--mostly of the secular nature though. We drove to Bloomington for a day one weekend to do some Christmas shopping and it was really fun and we got a lot of really thoughtful gifts for people. We went down to Indy another night and did the same thing, plus went to Trader Joe's and got a lot of special Christmassy foods and stuff. It was a fun family time! But it never really felt like Advent.

And that could be because of this house we're trying to buy. It's a deal that is going... it's moving... it's just not going smoothly. Or quickly. And at least once a day I get to the oh-let's-just-forget-about-it point. It's a really great little place, a little more than 2 acres with a nice old farmhouse, close to town. There have just been some hiccups along the way and it's turned into a Big Deal of Stress. I've got half my laundry room packed into boxes. I'm putting off buyings like gallon size ziplock bags because I don't want to have to pack any more than necessary when it's time to move. I want to start throwing stuff out, but I don't even know where to begin. I did clear out my kitchen pretty well, but the kitchen at the other house is set up pretty unconventionally. It's not filled with your typical cabinetry, so I can't just imagine my stuff going from my blue kitchen cabinets into those tan kitchen cabinets. It's not that simple. Plus, there's one room there that's going to be our library room and we purchased 5 enormous bookshelves from a local bookstore that went out of business. They are sitting in my parents' garage!

And speaking of my parents, our lack of Advent cheer could also partly be because my mom fell down (don't laugh!) and destroyed her elbow and spent an entire WEEK in a hospital in Indianapolis. That'll put a damper on pre-holiday cheer every time. We never went to visit her, because oddly enough, as we were getting ready to leave the house to do just that, Greta fell down the stairs onto her head and that night evening was spent in the local hospital Emergency Room making sure she'd be ok. (I'd like to add in here that this was many weeks ago and her bruised face/black eye was just getting to look more normal when she walked straight into a doorknob and BAM! Another black eye.) And Christmas as an extended family with the Matriarch laid up, while unique, can be somewhat subdued.

So that's the pre-Christmas stuff. And the idea of The Holidays just meant Big Delay in terms of that whole New House part of our life.

Christmas with our families was nice. We celebrated with Martin's family on the 23rd and it was a nice day. We celebrated with my family on the 24th and it was again a nice time--and the only time we saw my visiting brother and his family during their entire ten-day visit. Because on Christmas we hung out at home and were happy and the day after Christmas was a big snow day and Martin didn't have to go to work and that evening Greta went to bed with the fever and the next morning everything just went down the toilet and that's where it's been ever since.

A week is a long time to be sick. It's a long opportunity to miss things. I almost missed seeing my good friend Joannie. we've missed seeing our visiting siblings. New Years--HA! It was miserable. And now our tree is looking so downtrodden and wilty that I'm nervous about it keeping it up until Sunday. (who remembers to water the tree when you're busy watering your three crying children? Sometimes we watered them with Tylenol, maybe that would've perked up the tree.)

In the end, everybody's got ear infections and eye infections and disgusting sinuses. So all three girls are on ammoxicillin and hopefully will be on the mend soon. Actually, Anja is a few days ahead on her antibiotic and she is doing great. Back to her old self, one hundred percent, with just a lingering cough. I'm hopeful that the other girls will follow soon, but so far Greta is still not back to her old self. And Elka is getting there...

But I've got white things in my throat and the other day when I was AT THE DOCTORS office my throat wasn't hurting so I didn't bother putting myself into the appointment. But now today my throat hurts again and those white spots are multiplying and I'm just so sick of all of us being sick. I'm ready to pack up and move to Florida.

Well, here is a fortunate turn of events. Just now as I was getting to feeling really depressed, Kate Rusby came over my CD player singing "The King" which is the most incredible Christmas/Twelfth Night song ever created and it has lightened my heart.

I can't get any pictures to post. I'll try making a separate post for them. Maybe pictures will be more cheerful than this stinky account of our holiday season.

Let Me Tell You About My Day

Well, I'll tell you one thing, this past week has been anything but uneventful.

Here's a picture to kill you with cuteness before I begin:

 Okay, and here's one more:

 And I can't leave this one out!!  I'M SORRY!!! :

Whew. Okay. I think I've reached Blogger's Kitten Quota.

So, my oven has been dying a very slow and painful death, with the pain not so much having an impact on IT, as it does on ME and on my baked goods. It's just been getting worse and worse over the past year. Remember how I used to make my own bread? It just kind of stopped turning out. It kept coming out burned all over the outside and still raw on the inside. I would make quiche that should only cook for 30 minutes and it would take 2 hours to cook through. It was RIDICULOUS. Martin got me one of those hangy thermometers for the oven and that helped a little (at least I learned that the temperature was roughly 100 degrees off, give or take, depending on the day and the weather) but really, we had to come to grips with the fact that it was time for a new stove.

Thanksgiving was a big day for us. It started bright and early with me returning the van we'd been borrowing from my parents and enjoying a nice walk home from their house to ours. It was the most beautiful morning ever; a little cold, but really sunny, and all the fall colors that were hanging on were so bright and pretty. When I got home we all dressed up and loaded the car for our trip to Chicago for the day with Martin's family. It was also our nephew's birthday and Martin's sister's birthday, so it was quite the celebration.

The next morning Martin was determined to head out to the Black Friday sales and get us a new range. (He waited until mid-morning, because he's not insane, just frugal.) And he found one! A great deal on a flat top electric, very sleek and fancy. It took a few hours to get it in, then we had to cut windows and doors from the box it had come in, and our friend Perkins came over because she was in town for the weekend, so it was kind of a crazy day. Just like the day before.

I don't remember what we did on Saturday, but I know the girls had not quite recovered, behaviorally speaking. (It takes us awhile around here.) On Sunday we missed three different Mass times. This was mostly because of a pair of red tights that I'd bought the weekend before, stupidly telling Anja they were her Christmas tights. (Why did I say that?!? WHYYY?!?!?) So, when I suggested that Greta wear them and Greta excitedly agreed (new tights!) Anja had an absolute meltdown. And then Greta had a meltdown of equal intensity. It was pretty cool. So we had to go to the noon Mass, without our friend Perkins, and amazingly, the girls were pretty good. I don't remember the details of the rest of the day, but I know it wasn't our best. Still recovering from Thanksgiving, of course.

Monday promised to be an absolutely CRAZY day. Martin is off all week to hunt, but the morning was spent getting the girls ready for Anja to go to speech. And then I remembered that they had a doctor appointment in the afternoon, so I'd have to pick up Anja early from Speech. (Many tears.) I promised her that I would try my best to reschedule so she could stay at speech the entire time. Speech starts at 12:45. I called the doctor when I got home from dropping her off, but they were closed for lunch until 1:30. The appointment was at 2:00. So, at 1:30, AS I was driving to pick up Anja, I called the doctors office, explained that only if it was possible for them, could I move the appointment to later or to another day this week so my daughter wouldn't have to miss her speech class (which hadn't begun or even been scheduled when I made the doctors appointments, which I forgot about until I turned my calendar to December*) please? She asked the names of my kids and looked up the appointment and said brightly and very professionally, "We have you scheduled for December 3rd?"
*It's not December yet.
"Yeah... Oh wait... Today isn't December third?"
"Today is November 26th."
What a relief! It pays to not have any idea what day it is, I'm telling you. Martin asked me how I could possible think it was already Thanksgiving. My natural thought process was that since Thanksgiving is over, and I know that the doctors appointments are on a Monday, it must've been December! But, I was wrong. And so the day was saved.

Well, not quite saved. Because Anja's teacher sort of forgot to tell her that I was not coming early, so she spent almost the whole time at speech dreading leaving early. She told me that every time someone had said her name she thought they were going to tell her it was time to go. So sad!!  Anyway, I took Martin back home and he packed up to go hunt and Greta and Elka spent only a few minutes there before it was time to go pick up Anja at the regular time, which we did, and then went home and continued on through dinner. I had "seasoned" my new oven earlier in the day by letting it burn off it's new-oven smell, so I told the girls that we could make cookies when Daddy got home, because Elka was clingy and not napping well. (also a theme of the weekend.)

Martin called me at 5:00 to report no deer and that he was coming home, and it was really cold. He called from the truck so I knew he'd be home in 30-40 minutes. (As opposed to longer; where he hunts he parks up at the top of a hill and walks a long way to his hunting spots.) The girls and I hung out, drew pictures, made dinner. I kept telling them we'd make cookies as soon as Martin was home so he could hold Elka, and then I kind of realized I hadn't heard from him in awhile. And by "awhile" I mean an hour and a half. I called him to see what was taking so long, but got no answer. Waited a few minutes thinking he might be in a drive-thru, tried again--no answer. Sometimes if he's talking to someone on the other line it takes awhile before he gets the message that he needs to ask them to hold on while he answers my call to let me know he's still alive, so I kept calling... and calling... and calling.... and then it got to be a full two hours since I'd last talked to him, when he was telling me he was getting in the truck to come home, so I kind of started worrying. (worrying/panicking. They're the same thing, right?) Well, I called my mom, and my dad and my brother-in-law were going to go drive out there to look for him, and while they were doing that I called the local police who were getting me set up with the police in the town where he hunts, when a call came in from an out-of-town number and I answered and it was Martin. And he sounded kind of shivery and he said "I locked the keys and my phone and my coat in the truck." He had walked three miles from his hunting place to the McDonald's in the nearest town. Talk about relief! Here's the funny middle of the story he told me later:
He'd gone in and bought a cup of coffee (he hadn't locked his wallet in the truck) and asked where the nearest payphone was. Of course, nobody uses payphones anymore and hardly any exist. So while the employees were trying to figure out where was the nearest payphone, he told them what had happened, and finally the manager (he said she was really sweet) said, "do you need to use our phone?" and he said, "It would really help if I could call my wife." Haha, poor guy.
So anyway, since my dad was already on his way out that direction, he went and picked him up and brought him home. And what he'd failed to tell me before my dad picked him up was that he had actually locked the truck WHILE IT WAS RUNNING. After some consulting with the men of the family, it was decided that it would likely be a bad thing to let the truck run out of gas overnight, so he had to drive back out to turn off the truck. I didn't like this idea, considering the fact that I'd spent a good chunk of time that evening legitimately believing he was dead, and I liked it less when I found out that the key was not here... it was 40 minutes away. North. The hunting spot is 40 minutes away.... South.

Much driving on snowy/wet roads later, Martin FINALLY got home for the night a little after 1:00am. We sat on the couch and had beers together. He told me about the scary houses he'd approached looking for a phone or a piece of wire to jimmy the lock. He had gone through quite the ordeal trying to break into the truck before deciding to just walk to town. Quite the adventure!

Today we have decided to drive down to Bloomington for the day to do some Christmas shopping and have a festive vacation day. Sometimes we get the itch to go down there and hang out. I don't know why we've both been feeling that way lately, but we have, so we're going. Should be fun!

I mentioned speech class. Anja began attending a preschool phonology class two weeks ago and SHE LOVES IT. She loves it more than I can say. This is her on her first day:

 Greta is not such a fan of her sister going off and having fun while she has to stay home with me. Here's a picture of Greta that same first day:

 Evidently the snowman cookie didn't make up for the fact that Anja was off having loads of fun while she was stuck going to the grocery store with her parents. I'd probably feel the same way, really.

And one Sunday we took a family walk, and here are the girls and me. It was a beautiful day. We stopped by our favorite local coffee shop and ran into friends who'd recently moved back to town.

So, yeah, there's been no end to the excitement around here lately. Martin says I need to post on my blog more often. I'll try, but I'm not making any promises.