Blessingways

Is it possible to become addicted to pineapple juice? If so, I'm an addict. Completely and totally.

 An interesting thing has happened here in the past week.  The girls have begun drawing, and drawing pretty well! When Anja was really little (about one or two) if you gave her a piece of paper and a pen she was happy for a very, very long time, just making all sorts of little doodles.  And then she suddenly stopped.  For no apparent reason, she started saying she didn't want to draw because she didn't know how.  I tried and tried to encourage her, but she never wanted to draw.  Ever.  And then suddenly about a week ago, she started drawing again--bubble heads with faces and loooooooong legs and more normal sized arms with hands and fingers and hair and ears.  It's beautiful!  But it's so bizarre... it's like she had to figure out in her head the "right way" to draw, and then once she knew she could do it "right" she dove right in.  And she's been drawing constantly all week.

Meanwhile, Greta (who has never had a problem with doing anything "wrong" and has always loved drawing and coloring) just this week began putting big smiles on her drawings.  And it makes me so happy.  She fills up pages and pages of just smiling faces.  Sometimes they have arms and legs too, but it's the smile she likes best.

I really like it when I'm able to think that I have happy kids.  (Go ahead and think they're happy all the time... don't ask me about last Monday and how NOBODY was happy last Monday. At all.)  One day this week for lunch I gave the girls cherry tomatoes, crackers with cream cheese and something else... maybe sliced banana or apple or something.  I don't remember.  In any case, I put it on the table and Anja told me it was a "happy lunch" and that it made her happy to eat it.  How sweet is that!?  However, I'm seriously looking foward to some good Farmers Market produce for our summertime lunches.  I'm getting tired of the tasteless grocery store vegetables.  Oh, Winter. 

Speaking of Winter, I really like Winter and I like snow.  We have not had a snowy winter and we've definitely had more warm days than usual throughout this season (although we always get a couple of those random springlike days in January) but overall it seems like we have not had quite the tropical winter that other places have.  It's still been cold.  At times really cold.  So even though I know I SHOULD take down the evergreen and Christmas lights garland around our inside doorway (because March begins this Thursday, after all,) I just can't bring myself to do it as long as I still feel so cold.

Funnily enough, as I wrote that, Martin interrupted me to tell me that he gauges how close it is to spring by the number of below freezing low temperatures in the extended forecast.  He said tonight for the first time the number is less than twelve!

This afternoon my sister and sister-in-law planned and put on a Blessingway for me and two other pregnant friends.  It was a really lovely experience!  Anna (sister-in-law) was given one before her fourth baby was born and she had told me then (a year ago) that she'd love to do the same for me the next time I was pregnant. I was so glad it got to happen!  And also really glad that we had pregnant friends to share the experience.

They made some really fabulous food and everyone got to take home a little sachet of herbal bath.  Yum.  And it was really fun to sit around with a group of girls who have all known each other for so long.  It was really a perfect group!  And a perfect afternoon.

So, after Anna told me about her blessingway I thought it sounded really cool.  But then I looked them up on the internet yesterday and got really freaked out by how much TOUCHING seemed to be involved in these ceremonies.  Oh my gosh.  I don't do well with touching.  I mean, I give people hugs when it's the expected thing to do, but I don't enjoy it.  I try to act busy with my kids during the sign of peace at church because I don't even really care to shake anyone else's hands.  Sometimes, if I really REALLY don't want to touch people, I'll pretend I dropped something and stoop down to look for it and not come back up until the Lamb of God has begun.  That's how much I don't like other people touching me.  So when I read about the part where you have to have a foot bath and have people brush your hair and do whatever other touchy things, I a little bit freaked out and started trying to think of reasons to not go... except I couldn't just not go because this was planned to take place at MY HOUSE.  So Martin, being the loving husband that he is, made me a shirt that said in big black permanent marker letters: DON'T TOUCH ME.  And that made me feel a little better... but what really made me feel better was when my sister assured me this morning that this was just a ceremony of prayer and food and there would be no touching at all.  Whew.  That was close.