Blogiversary

Today is the one year anniversary of my very first blog post. I think it's funny that I decided to title the post, "This is actually a craft blog." It was clear even then that it wasn't really a craft blog, but I think I needed there to be the intent of a crafting agenda in order to get started. I've always loved writing, and kept journals for several years. But once I got pregnant, I was suddenly unable to write in my journal at all. Before having babies I think I viewed my journal as a therapeutic tool, a way to escape from the outside world and really figure out what was going on inside my head. After the kids were born, and I became a stay-at-home-mom, I began longing for a connection with the outside world rather than an escape from it. I spent all day alone with my thoughts and the needs of the kids, and as much as I wanted to have a written record of my experience, it didn't feel necessary to put any of what I was thinking about down on paper only so that I could read it again later.

Blogging is different because there's an audience, and thus more of a purpose to writing. The potential to inspire someone, widen someone's perspective, or even to make someone chuckle a little is enough to make it feel more worthwhile than simply writing in a personal journal. Blogging also added a new element to my days. Like sewing or painting or knitting, writing a blog entry is a tangible accomplishment that won't shortly undo itself and need to be done again (like getting the baby down for a nap, finishing the dishes or folding the laundry). While my daily activities didn't change once I had a blog to write about them in, I suddenly felt like I was doing so much more, or that what I was doing mattered more, or that at least it wasn't going unnoticed.

Writing a blog hasn't changed my life exactly, but it's changed the way I look at my life. A friend commented to me once how sometimes she feels like when people write blogs, they only write about the good stuff, and the blogs can become an unrealistic snapshot of what the bloggers' lives are really like. It's never been my intent to misrepresent our life, and while I pick and choose what to write about (for some reason the kids' recent cough/pink eye/ear infection illness hasn't made it here yet), I don't intentionally leave anything out. An online acquaintance recently mentioned that she enjoys reading my blog although it sometimes makes her "feel inadequate," a comment I found shocking. It made me worry that my own inadequacies have been failing to come through in my writing. I make a conscious effort to include my less-brilliant mothering moments, the often-times difficult personalities of my three children, and my struggles with figuring out what kind of life I want to live. That said, I do feel like keeping a blog has encouraged me to find the "silver lining" in any given situation. Take this photograph of grumpy Lukas:

I remember being struck by the beauty of the light reflecting off of his hair and the way he so confidently displays his feelings for all to see, and I chose to capture the moment rather than getting wrapped up in whatever it was that was making him pout. I think that by putting a positive spin on any given situation (either by choosing to find it funny rather than devastating or by using it as an opportunity to change things up) I do run the risk of portraying our family as being more perfect or happy or together than we truly are, but at the same time my own perceptions of things truly have changed for the better since I've started writing here. So, if I am painting a prettier picture than what reality might actually look like, well then the trick's on me, too.

I would love for anyone reading this blog to mark my blogiversary by introducing yourself or sending along a link to your own blog, or by starting a blog, if you don't already have one, and then sending along the link. Spread the blogging love and find the beauty in your lives where you didn't know it was (i.e. in the face of your obstinate kindergartener).

Seahorse

On Saturday Zeb and I went to a baby shower for one of his nursery school teachers, Kelli, who's expecting her first baby in March. Zeben was too shy and clingy (as is typical of him for the first hour-and-a-half that we spend in any new situation) to partake in the kids' craft activity of decorating tiny onesies with fabric markers. It's a shame because I would have loved to see his take on baby clothing embellishment. We gifted Kelli with this newborn-sized seahorse tee, that I had made earlier that morning:


The "avocado" colored, organic tee was the last of the 0-3 month shirts remaining from my dyeing endeavors last spring, which means, I suppose, that it's time to start thinking about dyeing again.

Zeb and I also gave Kelli the hand-me-down of our gently-loved real BabyHawk mei tai, which means, for sure, that I will need to make another imitation for us to keep and use with our new baby (not that we don't still have other mei tais hanging around, but I do especially like the design of the BabyHawk for newborns).

Nesting

At nearly 23 weeks, the fact that we'll be welcoming a baby this summer no longer seems quite as abstract as it used to. Lena's growing belly is a constant reminder and undeniable presence.


With 4 more months to go until we meet our new baby, there's a hint of nesting energy in the air. At this point in the pregnancy, many families would start to think about setting up a nursery or beginning to make an actual nest for the baby. Since we don't have any need for a nursery (our babies don't sleep in cribs), and our nest is already well established, there's not much that we need to prepare before our little one arrives.

We'd been hesitant to share the news of our impending arrival with our landlords, who live in the renovated barn behind our house. They used to live in our house, but decided that it was too small once they were ready to have kids. If they thought it was too small for one baby, how would they feel about us adding a fourth child to the square footage? Last week Lena's belly outed itself when our landlords were over fixing some things, and luckily they didn't threaten to evict us (not that they'd be able to, legally, of course). But they did ask us if we were still planning to stay and where we were going to put the baby. You know, because a newborn is like a whole 20" inches long and sometimes weighs as much as 10 lbs. so clearly it needs quite a bit of extra space.

We explained that we have little need for baby gear, and that our bedroom has plenty of room for a sixth family member.

our bedroom is all bed
(3 futons (king, queen, and full) squished together)

Jaz, Lena, and Lukas, about to wake up

For the first two years of their lives, Luke and Jaz sandwiched me in the night because they were still nursing. After they were weaned, and when I was pregnant with Zeben, they started snuggling with Lena instead. These days Lena sleeps with a king-size pillow on either side of her, for belly support and to act as a bit of a barrier between her and the kids (and their exceptionally sharp toenails). Zeb and I sleep together on the other side of Lukas. We're not clear yet about how the sleeping configuration will change once Leo joins the bed. I'm hoping that the solution will be clear when the time comes.

Even though we don't have space or need for a true "nursery," I can understand the desire to prepare one. I do want to do something to our house to make it look like we're expecting a new baby. I'm planning to turn my dresser into the baby's dresser (I barely use it anyway since my clothes are all stacked on shelves that line the perimeter of our bedroom), and make a little changing station on top of it so that we have an upstairs spot for diapers (our most beautiful changing table that Lena's dad made for Luke and Jaz is downstairs in the mudroom, across from the washing machine (the only place it would fit in our entire house!)). And I'll probably hang a mobile in that vicinity as well, and make it seem like a bit of a "baby space." I'll also get all the tiny diapers out and stack them on the changing table shelves, and refresh our supply of baby creams and lotions.

Otherwise, all of our nesting energy will have to go into making things (t-shirts, onesies, quilts and carriers) for the baby. Just last week, we were gifted our very first baby present, a gorgeous hand-knit cap, made especially for Leo by a long-time friend and crafty mama.

Leo's first gift

I realized that if I make one thing for the baby per week for each of the remaining weeks, I'll probably get to finish everything on my list. That said, the project at the top of the list will probably take me more than a week. It's going to be a quilt (my first ever!), but right now it's just a stack of fabric. I picked all different prints that reminded me of summer.

Beyond crafting tiny, soft loveliness, I'm working on figuring out the best, safest way to turn the bakfiets into a bicycle built for five (!). A nest on wheels, I suppose.

Celebrating Six

My mother was the queen of birthday parties when I was growing up. Each year there would be a theme with coordinated craft projects, games, homemade piñatas and birthday cakes. Someday I will have to do a post in her honor with photos of all of the extraordinary things she made for my parties. When Luke and Jaz turned 3, I decided that it was time for me to test out my birthday-party-mom genes. The theme was bugs, and I made a butterfly piñata (full of bug stickers) and caterpillar cupcakes. There was a treasure hunt (the "clues" were photographs of where the next clue was hidden) with bug-related treasures at the end, and a make-your-own puzzle activity with bug stamps and markers. 10 of Luke and Jasper's two and three-year-old friends came with their parents and scribbled on blank puzzles and tried to bust open the piñata (we ended up having to cut it!). It was pretty cute. The fourth birthday was basically a repeat without consequence, but when it came time to plan their fifth birthday party, I did not feel inspired.

The image of a dozen five-year-olds racing through the house just wasn't very appealing, and I had clued in to the fact that the kids' previous birthday parties had both proven to be breeding grounds for the dreaded pukey bug (I am not really a germaphobe except for when it comes to the vomit-inducing illnesses in which case I am incredibly OCD and paranoid and will go to great lengths to avoid coming into contact with potentially infectious people. We all (Lena, Luke, Jaz and I) had Rotavirus when the twins were 13 months old and it left me permanently traumatized).

So we decided not to do a kid birthday party, and instead we had some family and family friends over for dinner and birthday cake, and told the boys that maybe we'd have a kid party in the summer (but, um, somehow we never got around to it). This year, living in a much smaller house, we felt clear that we would again forego the traditional birthday party. We planned to have the boys each invite one classmate to go to the Children's Museum and then out to ice cream, but then our friend mentioned that the last time she'd been to the museum, it had smelled like vomit, so that plan was immediately abandoned. Instead, we ended up doing what we did last year, and inviting family and some family friends over for dinner and birthday cake (and again telling the kids that maybe we'll have a kid-party this summer . . . maybe).

I made up a quadruple batch of pizza dough to feed everyone. We didn't have a bowl quite large enough to accommodate all of that rising dough, so this is what happened:

overflowing pizza dough

But the pizza turned out just fine (I made five cookie sheets worth), as did the birthday cakes. Luke and Jaz don't like regular cake (weirdos!), so last year I attempted ice cream cake for the first time, and this year it came out even better. I just layered cookie crumbs and ice cream in spring form pans and then topped them with whipped cream. Pretty yummy.

a monkey cake for Lukas

a puppy cake for Jasper

the inside layers of Jasper's cake

I didn't manage to get a picture of the kids blowing out their candles the first time, but I did get a photo of Jaz's do-over (for some reason he couldn't blow out his candles . . . too excited maybe? . . . and after a few minutes of thinking he was just pretending that he couldn't blow them out, everyone else blew them out for him . . . which caused him to have a total meltdown, so we let him have a second chance privately in the mudroom (where he was finally successful)).

There was also a treasure hunt for the 7 kids (our three, Elijah and Aryeh, and our old neighbor friends) which I think made it feel more like a real party to Luke and Jaz.

the first of 10 clues

We asked that people not bring gifts for the birthday boys, but we made an exception for handmade-by-grandma gifts. Grammy/Merka/Lena's mom had been working for several months on quilts for Luke and Jaz, and they really turned out so beautifully. Luke and Jaz have been snuggling them ever since.

Jaz loving his quilt

Luke loving his quilt

the two quilts hanging together

Because school was closed on Wednesday (the kids had a 5-day break), they celebrated their birthdays in their classrooms on Thursday. Lena and I forgot all about the fact that we were supposed to bring in birthday snacks until Thursday morning, so there was no time for homemade anything. Instead Lena made a last-minute run to the grocery store for popsicles (totally appropriate for February, right?). We also found out that we were pretty much required to partake in the school birthday celebrations (it wasn't actually mandatory, but we'd be the first parents NOT to go, if we chose to skip it). So we changed our morning plans and hung out in the kindergarten classrooms for an hour instead.

the daily message in Luke's classroom

Luke enjoying his birthday popsicle

the daily message in Jasper's classroom

Jaz blowing out 6 candles in front of his class

I'm still adjusting to the idea of having six-year-olds, but I'm very optimistic about what this year of mothering will entail. I'm really liking Luke and Jaz these days, which--shocking as it may sound--is not always a given, and I feel like we're entering a new era of having more reasonable, more consicientous, less self-centered and more aware children. Bring it on.

As Clever as Clever

"Now We Are Six," by A. A. Milne

When I was One, I had just begun.

When I was Two, I was nearly new.

When I was Three, I was hardly me.

When I was Four, I was not much more.

When I was Five, I was just alive.

But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever,

So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

Happy Birthday Lukas and Jasper!

the birth announcement

To Be or Not to . . . "Be Mine"

Despite my general attitude of "any excuse for a party!" I am not sure how I feel about Valentine's Day. Like most holidays in the U.S., it has become overly-commercialized and is now more a celebration of consumerism than love. Lena and I have never chosen to recognize Valentine's Day in our relationship (or rather, we try to take on the attitude that "every day is Valentine's Day"), but I am amazed by the extent to which the general public seems to have bought-in.

I'm especially ambivalent about the school celebration of Valentine's Day. I understand that the kids' teachers see it as a literacy project: the kids get to address valentines to each of their classmates, and then deliver them to the correct bag. But it seems that the literacy component is only a very small part of the whole experience. A couple of weeks ago, each of the kids' teachers sent home a list of all of the names of the children in each classroom so that we would be sure to make enough valentines for everyone. I looked at the list of names, and did not feel inspired.

Lukas contemplating his class list

Jasper and Lukas didn't feel particularly inspired either. But, we all reasoned together that if they chose not to make valentines (Lukas was quick to remind us all throughout the process that "it is a choice!") they would probably feel really sad and left-out during the school celebration. So I scrounged up some craft materials (card stock, craft sticks and googly eyes), and we set up a valentine-making station on the dining room table.

Jaz in the midst of Valentine production

Jaz made a prototype, and then Lena and I helped to mass-produce the valentines so that Jaz could focus on writing kids' names on them.

This valentine is feeling ambivalent about Valentine's Day too.

Lukas couldn't quite motivate himself to do any valentine-making whatsoever, so Lena and I made enough of Jaz's design for Luke's class as well. And then Jaz signed the ones for Luke's classmates: "from Lukas." By Friday morning, both Luke and Jaz had a bag full of googly-eyed hearts-on-sticks for the kids in their class, yet it was hard to call the experience a total success. Lena and I had done most of the valentine-making, and on a scale from 1 to 10, I'd say the kids' excitement level was at about 2.

I felt even less enthused about the school Valentine's Day celebration when the kids came home on Friday afternoon, in tears about the unfairness of the fact that Lukas had received two halogram valentines, and Jaz hadn't gotten any. I was shocked (and somewhat horrified) by how many parents had chosen to purchase ready-made valentines with character pictures on them (you know, instead of making the valentines for their kids the way Lena and I had). Maybe it's just me, but I think a store-bought card with a picture of a Storm Trooper on it is about as far from the original intent of Valentine's Day as one can get.

Yesterday morning (Ferbruary 14th), Zeben woke up with pink eye (how fitting!), and I decided that despite my bah-humbug attitude about Valentine's Day, I would go all out and make heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast (we've had the heart-shaped pancake molds for years, but never used them before). As an extra special treat, I added mini chocolate chips to the pancakes instead of our usual default of mini blueberries.

The kids very much enjoyed watching the pancake hearts
cooking on the griddle
while nibbling on some spare mini chocolate chips.

But when it came time to eat the pancakes? Not so much enjoyment going on. Lukas and Jasper both burst into tears, complaining that they didn't want to eat chocolate in their pancakes. Oh the horror! Blueberries go in pancakes, not chocolate chips! When we asked them why they didn't say anything earlier, like for instance when they were watching us cook the pancakes, Jaz sobbed, "well I knew you were making chocolate chip pancakes, but I thought you'd know that I still wanted blueberry pancakes!" Apparently my mind-reading skills were not up to par on this particular Valentine's Day.

A very disappointed Lukas

So Lena and I ate the (delicious) heart-shaped chocolate-chip pancakes all by ourselves, and then I resolved to try and save the rest of the day by taking the kids to the library to check out a movie. We actually got a couple of movies, one for the kids to watch as soon as we got home, and one for us all to watch later that night, take 2 on "Special Valentine's Day Treat." Lena was asleep when we got back from the library, and I decided to surprise my lovely wife by getting our old futon couch out of my mom's basement, and setting it up in the living room (she hasn't ever adjusted to the couch-free living room set-up, and Valentine's Day seemed like an appropriate time to remedy the situation). I moved the train table back up into the kids' bedroom, and put the futon frame together in its place. It makes so much more sense than the blue couch we had there before because it takes up less space and can convert to a guest bed (and isn't covered with the most-annoying dust-attracting material nor is it likely to get turned into a daily "couch fort" (two of my least favorite things about the blue couch)).

Lena was thrilled when she woke up from her pregnant afternoon slumber and discovered that she'd no longer have a reason to sigh and complain about our living room every evening, and we all enjoyed cozying up on the couch together after dinner to watch "Duma," a love story of sorts about a boy and his pet cheetah.

My Sweet Family
(living room set-up #3)

Our second attempt at doing something special was a big hit, and we ended the day full of love and appreciation for our sweet little chocolate-chip-pancake-hating children. I'm still not sure how I feel about Valentine's Day, but the good news is I've got 364 days before I need to think about it again.

Tiny Kid

The other day Lukas asked Zeben, "are you a baby or a big kid?"

Zeben responded: "No, I not a baby, I not a big kid. I a tiny kid."



I couldn't help but smile at his accurate self-description. Zeben is stuck somewhere in-between baby and big kid right now, and it's not always the most pleasant place for him to be. He has been bit hard by the "do it myself!" bug except for the times when I want him to do something independently, in which case he refuses, saying, "I can't. I too tiny." He demands, "pick you up!" one minute and then, after I've carried him out to the car, he insists that I bring him back to the house so that he can walk himself out to the car instead. He is the definition of fickle.


Luckily for me, he remains incredibly cute and funny, and luckily for him, I've been through this all before. I am able to remain calm in his most ridiculous moments and, having already learned how to talk to a tiny kid, I'm able to avoid many more conflicts than I was with Luke and Jaz at this stage.

The thing to say before walking through a traffic is not "you can either hold my hand, or I'll carry you." Instead I ask, "which of my fingers do you want to hold in the parking lot?" Or, "do you want to ride on my shoulders, my back, or my front?" I make the big decisions, and leave him with the smaller choices.


I try not to force anything. I simply state what needs to happen, "you need to pee before we leave the house." And then, if Zeben resists, I say, "OK. You tell me when you're ready to pee, and then we can leave."

The choice is not whether or not to get dressed, but which of two t-shirts he wants to wear. He is not allowed to wear a shirt as pants, but if he only wants "Mama!" to put his pants on, that's perfectly fine.


I try to choose my battles wisely. If Zeben requests that I bring him back to the house so that he can walk to the car all by himself, I bring him back without hesitation. But I get to be the one to buckle him into his car seat.


I try to cherish his baby moments, the times when he tugs at my legs and cries, "I need you!" and it would be so easy to just feel exasperated. I tell him, "I need you too." We lay around on the couch, nursing on and off all afternoon, and he could be a 6-month-old.


And I try to appreciate his big kid moments just as enthusiastically. He insists on carrying his lunch box and his "guys" and walking all by himself across the expanse of sheer ice that is our driveway. And when he successfully makes it all the way inside the house, I show him where to hang his coat and where to put his boots, and he could be a 5-year-old.


He clears his plate and washes his hands by himself after dinner now, but then still wants me to carry him up to bed and nurse him to sleep.


I think one of the hardest things about this stage with Luke and Jaz, was making the realization that I wasn't always enough for them anymore. The rejection was unexpected and I felt it so deeply. I had thought that we had this special thing going, that I'd always be able to make them happy, that simply being with me would always be a treat. I didn't realize that rejecting me would be a necessary part of the turning-from-baby-to-big-kid process.


This time around, with Zeben, I hardly feel rejected at all, even though he's doing all the same things that his brothers did at his age (maybe even more so since he has them as an influence and has already learned some lovely key phrases like, "I hate you!"). Perhaps it's just that my perspective has changed (I'll take a moody 2-year-old over a moody 4-year-old any day), or maybe it's the fact that I knew this was coming all along, so it's not such a shock this time.


I feel no rush for Zeben to become the independent big kid he'll one day soon be, nor do I feel like I'm clinging to the last strands of his babyhood. I'm simply enjoying this tiny, fickle, loving, stubborn, funny kid and taking each day as it comes.

I love you, Zeben.