everyday miracles, seen and unseen

My new camera improves my pictures many times over, but doesn't make up for the fact that I am mostly unapologetically a messy person. Hannukah is here and we celebrate it mostly to remember where we come from as a family. But I didn't grow up celebrating it, so we are winging it, and feeling our way through making up our new traditions.

It isn't really suppose to be a present holiday, but the nana, and our aunts, and the cousins, supply us with gifts a plenty. This year the whining got to me, and I decided to let Pizza (aka 4 year old) open his gifts first night, so I wouldn't have to hear it anymore. In a way this is good as it gets them out of the way so the subsequent nights can be a little more low key. And indeed this seemed to work.

First night was a pain, and I found myself swearing I wouldn't be celebrating this holiday next year. I cooked a big dinner, well a chicken and latkes. For the unintiated latkes are a bit of a pain, shredding potatoes, wringing the water out of them as best you can, shredding onions, mix in a little egg and matzo meal, form sortof like you might make a hamburger (wringing out still more excess moisture), and gently, ever so gently, place in hot oil. They turned out great this year, but it takes a long time to make, Pizza isn't so excited about the meal anyway, Yogurt was hungry and a little cranky because I couldn't pay attention to him. In short I could really use an extra hand around when I making them to keep the kids entertained (weeknight= husband at work til late no matter what). So maybe next year we will hold off the big meal until a weekend. Anyway we got through it, ate dinner a little late, lite candles, and finished opening presents somewhere in the middle.

Second night was much simpler and more to my liking. The pictures are from this night. Reheated soup, chicken nuggets (for pizza), and latkes (for me). We lit the candles, made up a prayer, all before daddy came home. We also opened up yogurt's presents, and found a couple extra ones for pizza I didn't realize we had (thank's Nana).

I'm envisioning much the same, except our hannukah treat will be doughnuts, even though I'm very tempted to make more latkes, because they were very good. And then onwards to Christmas smack dab in the middle of all this merriment this year!

Reflections

Listening to christmas carols sung by Kathleen Battle, and contemplating.......

We are a very secular household, mistrustful of organized religion for the ill it has brought to the world, and the ill it still brings to the world. The wars, the nauseting way political figures in this country thumb their bibles, and sell out their souls for power, the use of religion for justification of some many stupid and injustice things.....

and yet....listening to this very religious music, this very spiritual music, floods me with a sense of hope, love, and the grand possibilties of humanity when we open our hearts to the ideals imbodied in the Christmas story itself.

Afterall it is the story of one small family's journey through an unjust world. The love of family prevailing over this injustice, with the help of strangers: the inkeeper who finds shelter for the expectant mother as her time draws near, the sheperds who come to celebrate the child's birth, the maji who bring gifts. Those who one might imagine help shelter the baby from Herod's madness.

It is also about the special possibility and hope that babies bring to world. That the baby born in poverty can grow up to be one who changes the world.

It is about a mother and father's love for their child, the waiting for the baby to be born which is a magical and transforming time for anyone who goes through it.

It is about birth and life and love, and the cycle that envelopes us all and connects us to one another.

The problem for me is how to convey these feelings about humanity and its capacity for goodness into our holiday celebration.

Moving Forward

Something took a big bite out of our jack-o-latern (a deer?),paul sleeps alot, we managed to order and receive our backyard playground,and that elusive smile which is hard to capture, though he smiles all the time, and blows bubbles.

Moving forward, pulling off a birthday party, with two weeks planning.

October

October has come and went.

The blurring of time continues.

But it's not bad, not really.

The days have taken on a dream like quality as I try to be "in the moment" and not in the haze of feedings, and diaper changes, and toddler demands. always at the worst possible time.

But my boys are wonderful.

One Month!

3 Weeks

2 Weeks

One Week

Almost Ready

I bought the fabric for this project way back in March, just before we started showing the old house and I had to put my sewing stuff in deep storage. I finally found time to put together a sewing space (the living room, which has excellent natural light) and sew the dern thing.

Deep breath. I am almost ready to met this little guy who has been kicking up a storm in my belly since I was 16 weeks!It is now coming down to just a handful of things (carseats, second rocking chair, children's tylenol, wash breast pump just in case, nephew's birthday party.....)But the important thing, this blanked I so wanted to give to my little one is done!

Hmmm....

37 weeks!

Trying to spend the last little bit of time before Yogurt's arrival enjoying the days with my little boy. It is a little sad that the days of me and my little guy are at an end, and soon it will be me and my little guys, or my big guy and my little guy, however you want to think of it.

With this is mind, we took a 3 day weekend staycation with the focus on doing stuff with the little guy. It started with a Friday morning trip to the Montgomery County Ag Fair, and a visit to the tractors. He has been talking about this since I took him (by myself because JC sprained his ankle that morning) last year. "When is the fair open? Can we go to the fair?" It has really been pretty constant, which is suprising. I guess it made quite an impression on him.

The boy loves the tractors, skid loaders, lawn mowers, and the combine harvester! And the tractor ride from the parking lot. Not so much into the animals, but he did pet a goat or two.

And we went to the National Zoo for the first time all summer to see the baby lions, which aren't so little anymore! And we went to IKEA, and Cabin John, and found a new park in Rockville. It was a nice weekend. We haven't had one like that in a good long while.

Then there was the earthquake, and the hurricane which thankfully just busted up one of our last weekends BB, and didn't really make itself too much of a nuisance. Although I did scoop the little guy out of his bed at the height of the winds howling and plop him inbetween us. Just feel safer knowing I can grab him quickly if need be, even if that sentiment is completely illogical. At some point in the night he sort of woke up and looked at me with a big smile on his face. He likes being in bed with us, but we don't allow it often.

So we are down to our last little bit of quiet before the baby arrives, and while I'm looking forward to the new arrivial, I'm going to miss these days a little bit too. I'm trying to spend as much time enjoying with the little guy as I can because these days are fleeting too.

A time to finish up, and start anew

I looked at my calender this weekend. Guess what I'm 35 weeks pregnant, not 34! I'm missing a whole week now! And wow, there is a big mental difference between 34 and 35. 35 is starting to be in that range of it could happen anytime!

With that in mind last weekend I knitted the pebble vest by Nikol Lohr( pebble) and this weekend I actually finished it!

I also finished the tiny tea leaves by Melissa La Barre ( tiny tea leaves) for my niece. I had finished knitting this months ago, back when it was cold, but because of all the house selling, moving, nonsense I never had the patience to sew in the ends and get buttons. Yes it's knit in the same yarn as the vest (knitpicks Swish DK, delft heather). I like this sweater alot, and it will make a nice big girl sweater for my niece. I just hope it fits in the shoulders and sleeves. I'm worried the sleeves might be too tight.

I'm trying to squeeze some more baby knitting in, and a have a pair of socks for myself I would like to finish before baby arrival, and I think I need to come up with a nice sweater for the little guy too, because he sees me knitting all this stuff for the baby, and I don't want him to get jealous, and I want to work on my long hibernating DC blanket, and a mitre squared blanket for the baby. Hmmm... I think I have the knitters version of nesting: The stuff in the house, the nursery, that can all wait, i just feel like knitting. And there is that taggy blanket project..... maybe I need to set up my sewing area at least!

We got rhythm??

Inspired by a blog I recently started reading (http://frontierdreams.blogspot.com/), and by some issues that started cropping up around our home, we are trying to establish a routine in our household. The idea is to help the 3.5 year old feel a little more secure and maybe cut down on some of the whining, and tantruming that had started to creep into our daily existence.

This summer has been one of transition for our family. We packed up one household, moved to hotel for a month, and have since been setting up in the new house. In addition I am 33 weeks pregnant, and the pregnancy has taken a toll on my patience and energy level. The routines we had (which weren't that good to begin with) completely feel apart for awhile, and we ate out a whole lot, got a lot of take out, got into the habit of going somewhere almost ever afternoon. Now that we are in the house and setting up, I have started to cook real food again, and seemed like it was time to start reigning in some of the chaos. I wanted to do this to help the little guy adjust and feel secure in the new house, but what I'm finding is that it helps me probably as much as it helps the little guy.

I guess the other thing to point out is that I am also really still trying to figure out the whole stay-at-home mom thing. I worked full time the first 2.5 years of the little guys life, and some of our bad habits stem from the exhaustion of that period of our life.

The little guy wakes up slowly. I go into his room around 7:15 and say good morning, I try tickling him, and sit and talk a little. Then he gets up, walks down stairs, plops on the couch, and watches TV, usually Dinosaur Train, for a half hour while he wakes up. I drink coffee.

Breakfast is a tricky meal for us. The little guy is picky. I have never been a big breakfast eater, and this doesn't help the little guy. We used to just eat breakfast on the couch while watching TV. This is a bad habit from my working days. Now we are trying to turn off the TV at 8:00 and go over to the dining room table and sit down together, even with daddy if he doesn't have to be in to the office early, and eat something. Still working on meals that work, but this has always been tricky for us. We do this for about fifteen minutes.

Then we march upstairs to get dressed and brush our teeth. Again this was something we used to do sitting on the couch during the morning crunch. To get him to do this a bribe him by with ten minutes of play time before herding him into the car to get to nursery school in time. He stays in nursery school til noon.

We are a week into the new routine, and it seems to be working. The little guy is taking some pride in getting dressed, and the whining has been minimal. We shall see if he simple gets bored, but I hoping that establishing this now will help us weather the arrival of the baby, by giving the little guy something to help him help us get him ready for school everyday.

Moving

Old kitchen, fun with flour, hotel while we wait, new house, new kitchen

Not much difference in the state of my kitchen before and after our migration

We will be putting away boxes forever.