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.

Another Girl!

Can you even believe this cute face is five years old? And she is SO happy to be five. In the few days leading up to her birthday she would just burst out, "I can't believe I'm almost FIVE!" many times a day. And now that she is five, it seems to be everything she hoped it would be.

Her birthday was very fun. We'd been planning a special surprise for her for about three years... a kitten in a pumpkin! Every year on her birthday since she turned 2 we've thought "is this the right year?" and always the answer has been no, until this year. And oddly enough, just a couple of days before her birthday (when we'd already lined up the kitten) she started saying "I hope I get a kitten for my birthday" and trying to convince Greta to get her one. Specifically, a tiny calico. Well. That's just exactly what she got.

When Anja came into the room, she first thought the moving creature in there was a spider! But she eventually realized it was a kitten, and the kitten was immediately named Mary. And so, we have another little girl in our family. Mary, the calico kitten. The tiniest, sweetest, friskiest, most dog-like kitten ever, who likes to wiggle up into the dresser drawers from underneath, through the little gaps at the back of the drawers, and sleep on Martin's tshirts. She is not a bit shy, and she has been the perfect Birthday Cat.

Anja received a few special packages in the mail; one was from Auntie Perkalator, who sent this fox card, which Anja really loved. 

We had her family party this past Sunday. She asked for a strawberry cake, so I made one of those weird jello poke cakes, but I used too much jello and it was kind of gross. I also opted for homemade whipped cream (thanks, Martin!) instead of Cool Whip, because I'm an idiot like that. The theme of the party was PRINCESS. It was a very nice day and it looks like Anja's princess dress has replaced her fox costume for the time being, as her everyday uniform.

Here's more KITTEN:

I knit up this bowl to be our Thankfulness Bowl on our kitchen table. It's kind of cheesy, I know, but I feel that it's important to teach the girls about being thankful for even the smallest little things. Like markers, which is what Greta wrote on her card. And of course, Anja is thankful for.... being 5. But I'm sure we are all equally thankful that Mary has joined our family.

She's really SO tiny. (And while you might think the above picture is taken during an enormous roar, she actually can't make a noise any bigger than a tiny squeak, no matter how wide her mouth opens.)

So, yes, it was a good birthday. And I feel now that the Holiday season has begun. Making Thanksgiving plans, getting secret packages in the mail full of Christmas presents, guessing our anniversary gifts for each other, etc. This Christmas we'll celebrate 6 years, the traditional gift for which is "iron." When Martin told me that, I said, "you can get me a dutch oven!" and he said "thanks a lot." Then I worked really hard to sneakily get him into the local blacksmith guild but I had to tell him about it early. That's all I said--"I have your gift, but I have to give it to you early"--and he guessed it RIGHT AWAY. How did he do that?!? Anyway... in the end, it didn't even matter because the first meeting was this past Saturday, but Martin wasn't able to go after all because he'd spent the entire night before in the emergency room with Greta, with a terrible case of croup. It's always a little scary when they wake up coughing like that, but this time it was really frightening and very sudden--she doesn't even have a cold! I thought she was having some kind of allergic reaction to something and we couldn't get her calmed down so we rushed her off. Evidently they almost admitted her... luckily, she got calmed down and the breathing treatment did it's job. We've got a prescription through a few more nights, so hopefully we'll have no repeats of this! And Martin said the nurse was SO nice and that Greta was her old charming self by the end of the night.

Needless to say, our Saturday was pretty quiet.

And here are my girls:

 Elka is 5 months old this week!

Where Every Day's a Holiday

Anja is really into holidays. The other day she said it's no good to have just a regular day that isn't a holiday; that's no fun. And my explanation that the reason holidays are holidays is precisely because they don't happen every day was not enough for her. But really, the joke's on her, because right now every day IS a holiday around here. Just wait till she goes to school next year and she can't stay in her pajamas till noon, or change costumes fourteen times a day, or decide that right now is a good time to bake cookies... We've got a pretty great life around here these days--relaxed, happy, fun... and on most days we do all the things that we do on the holidays, complete with seeing the relatives. It's just that normal life is a lot better than the holidays on the normal days I'm not freaking out about washing their hair and keeping obligations and having to be someplace on time. When you don't go anywhere, time means nothing. I like it that way. I don't know how ready Anja will be next fall when she heads off to kindergarten, but I can tell you one thing: I'M going to miss these days and this easy-breezey lifestyle!

Here are some things we did today:
-Colored
-Drew pictures
-Played music (Elka LOVES music... I'm going to have to have Martin take a video of her wiggling to "Rattlin' Bog" sometime soon)
-Made a very ugly leaf garland out of colored construction paper cutouts
-baked "sweetberry crisp"
-Ate mashed potatoes in the middle of the afternoon because mashed potatoes sounded like a good snack
-Read 'George and Martha'.  Okay, RIGHT NOW, no matter your age or whether or not you've got kids, you HAVE to go to your local library or at least get on their website and place a hold on as many George and Martha books as you can. We just can't get enough George and Martha around here! They are so funny
! They are so sweet! And they are an example of true friendship. I don't remember loving them when I was little, but as an adult, they are my absolute favorite book characters. I love them. I really think they might even beat out Frog & Toad.
-Ate candy (until I decided it was time to hide it all for awhile.)
-Stayed dressed out our Halloween costumes, which we'd slept in, and which we are sleeping in again right now.

And that brings us to our next topic: HALLOWEEN!

 As you can see, Anja was not a princess, as you might have been lead to believe after seeing the first picture of this post. No, princess dresses are worn casually around these parts. For Halloween, Anja was a fox. A really splendid fox, too. I feel like I did enough complaining already to anyone who would listen about how we BOUGHT the girls princess dresses (really pretty ones) three weeks ago and they were all revved up to wear them until about two days before Halloween when Anja decided she was going to be a fox. Her exact words were "I'm intent on being a fox." And so she was! No matter how much I tried to convince her that she'd make an awesome princess, she wanted to be a fox, and so, a fox she was.

This is the back of the costume:

 In the end, it was totally worth the headache this costume caused me. She LOVED being a fox (her fox name is Mary, by the way) and it was a good exercise for me in letting go. So what if I didn't get the dishes done from the family dinner party we'd had the night before? (oh... those dishes are still on the counter? Hmm.... ) Anja really enjoyed watching the costume take shape, trying it on as we went, checking everything before I made any seams to make sure it was just how she wanted it. And in the end, it turned out to be a pretty good costume for being constructed from scratch in just a few hours. The funny thing is, on the one hand I feel like I should be proud of myself for being able to whip up a costume like that lickedy-split... on the other hand, I feel like a fool because this is what I do every Halloween! Thankfully, Greta changed her mind in this order: Princess-ghost-bat-princess-[as we were walking out the door] CAT! Luckily, we had a cat costume in our dressup basket.

A few days ago they carved a pumpkin with Oompa up at my parents' house. I forgot about carving pumpkins. Because I'm a loser mom.

And speaking of cats, let's talk about THIS crazy cat:

Elka has begun to crawl. Does this seem ridiculously early to anyone else?! Four and a half months? CRAWLING?!? She's not quite got the arm-and-leg synchronized movement down yet, she's still at the rocking on her hands and knees phase. But she'll get up on her hands and knees and then rocket herself forward. This is how she gets places. Like a little toad. She can go across the room this way. It's crazy! And really, really funny to watch. It makes me worried about my future.

I got a call today from our local special services program within our schools and have an appointment to get Anja started with speech therapy. I feel like her speech (articulation, I guess) has gone up and down over the past year or two, and right now I do think it's improving, but I'm afraid she needs to improve A LOT before she goes to school next year. So that ball is finally rolling.  It's kind of sad because she has a really incredible vocabulary for a four year old (I'm clinging to the fact that she's still four... I've got one week left...) but nobody can tell that because nobody can understand a thing she says! But, a fix is in sight, at last.

To be honest, we've spent the majority of our days lately gathered around the kitchen table with piles and piles of paper, drawing. Greta, especially, LOVES to draw. In one month Greta has gone from drawing heads with stick limbs to drawing whole detailed people and even beginning to grasp the concept of foreground and background, distance within a picture and expression of movement and emotion. It's really, really fun to watch. Here's a picture she drew of Anja, Greta and Elka in Halloween costumes:

Elka is the little one with the stick on top her of her head (that's her mohawk) as a mummy; Greta is below that as a ghost; Anja is the big one with curly hair, and I can't really remember what her costume is... maybe a fox with a flower on her tummy? I can't remember, but it made sense when Greta told me (at least, it made as much sense as a three year old's drawing can.) Anyway, it's been so fun to watch her drawing develop, I'll be interested to see if that's something she'll continue with or not! Greta is absolutely turning out to be the artsy one of the bunch... she can really sing in tune too! Anja likes to do all the same things Greta does, but she does them much more strategically. She is more interested in doing things the "right" way  Except when it comes to poetry... Anja loves poetry and often closes her eyes to recite.

And here is a picture of my three little goofballs, all looking perfectly goofy, showing off their footy pj's as cold weather has arrived here.

And even though they all like to wear pajamas, none of them really likes sleep very much. Which is too bad. Obviously.

I imagine the next time I post Anja will be a big five year old, since that's happening next Friday. It will be an exciting birthday for her in more ways than one. I'm very excited for it myself!