7 Quick Takes, Late Edition

--1--

I spent today in New York City at the Mt Sinai allergy practice.  I'm sort of at the end of what my allergist here in Philly can do for me (I'm pretty extreme when it comes to allergies), and I started seeing someone up there.  Now that I'm not pregnant anymore, we can move forward on a management plan.  Today's visit was to redo all the original testing to establish a baseline and go from there.  I feel more hopeful about the whole thing than I have in a long time.

--2--

Piglet has been off school all this week and while it hasn't been easy, it hasn't been terrible either. I have had a lot of extra help from my regular babysitter, as Birdie is still cranky and sick, and I'm terribly tired (see #3).    But even so, the week has gone better than expected, and I'm starting to be able to appreciate who he is as a person rather than this unruly being that has to be constantly disciplined and monitored for acting out. He is getting very close to four, so maybe what everyone says is true, that four is a bit easier.  On the other hand, he did fall in the toilet and banged his forehead on the procelain this week.  I'm still laughing.

--3--

We actually had two nights that lasted past 1 a.m. this week!  We've had several weeks of whatever sleep I get before 1 a.m. is what I get, and I was getting seriously giddy from the lack of sleep.  So while I'm still very seriously sleep deprived, I no longer feel like I am a danger to myself and others from the lack of sleep.

--4--

Okay, I know this is sort of dumb, but I discovered by accident this week that my novel has a Barnes and Noble listing.  So neat!  Kind of makes me feel official.  Or something.

--5--

Boo graduated out of services this week, so now I only have one child receiving therapy--woot woot!  Boo is walking pretty well, gaining about a word a day (or more sometimes) and is fond of multi-syllabic words like broccoli or chocolate.  He's started asking to use the potty.  Sometimes I forget he is only 19 (almost 20) months--he seems more like a 2.5 year old to me. Oh, and I forgot to mention in #2 that Piglet is finally cough-free for the first time in three years!! YAY!!  Turns out it was sinusitis and that an extra long course of antibiotics did the trick.  Now we just have to wean him down from all the other meds he's been on to manage the cough.  

--6--

Birdie still sounds awful, but our pediatrician said we just have to wait for her lungs to heal.  In other news, her head is HUGE!  (All my kids have big heads).  I always think of Mike Myers in So I Married an Axe Murderer when I think of their HUGE heads.  (If you haven't seen this film, run, do not walk, to the nearest Netflix streamer and watch it.  You'll thank me).

--7--

Nothing new to share, because I have zero creative energy right now for anything except MDS (working on Birdie's baby book...), but I CASEd this from Nance Leedy a few months back.  I just love that pop of red on the flowers--I forget how nice this set is.  

Two Pears

*I have another post in the hopper, but am struggling to finish it, so I'm going to leave you a little story of my early days in Moscow.  I have a few of these stories floating around on my hard drive that I may pull out and share along the way.

I arrived at Sheremetyevo II in Moscow late in the evening, exhausted and jet lagged after more than 24 hours in transit due to a six hour layover in Warsaw.  I had more luggage than I could hope to manage by myself, but somehow I managed to clear customs without a hassle or a cart.  I had been given to understand that someone from the University would be picking me up at the airport.  In my naïveté, I assumed that someone would speak some English.  Wrong.  I got a Georgian with a handful of English words who didn’t know how to put them in a sentence.  It was muggy and smoky in the city—peat fires from the countryside kept smoke rolling over the city for weeks after.  There was the familiar smell of Moscow, and the sights and sounds denied me for four years. 

When we arrived at my apartment in the south central part of the city (a part completely unknown to me) he helped me with my luggage and bade me farewell.  I stood looking around my little apartment that I had arranged to let from some friends who had worked my job in the previous academic year.  They had promised that the fridge and cabinets would be stocked for me when I came (I had paid someone to do this) and that everything would be reasonably clean.                  

Well, the apartment was clean, but there were two lonely pears and two slices of something that looked like ham in the fridge and that was it.  Someone had thoughtfully placed flowers on the table, but you can’t eat those.  It was too late for me to be hungry, so I just rummaged through my luggage to find my nightgown and crawled into bed after a quick phone call to the States to let my mother know I had arrived safely. 

I woke up the next morning lost.  I didn’t know where I was in the city, I had no rubles and was terrified to leave my apartment for fear that I wouldn’t be able to find it again. I wasn’t precisely sure of the address and Russians are notorious for giving bad directions or making up directions if they don’t know.  So I waited.  I had a vague notion that someone was supposed to phone me—I remembered Valery saying something about it when he dropped me off the previous night.  I started unpacking my things, feeling sick in my stomach.  After what seemed a lifetime, someone from the college where I was to work phoned late in the day and offered a brief tour of the area.  Larry came by and took me out for an hour, showing me where I could change money, but little else. 

I went back to my apartment and was left alone for four days—no phone calls, no visits, nothing.  A stranger in a strange land.  I kept forgetting to eat, and couldn’t face the bare fridge with those two pathetic little pears and the weird looking ham slices.  I was homesick, jet lagged, and afraid to leave my apartment.  I woke up sobbing each of those four days and wondered what I had been thinking, joining an organization that didn’t do a thing to ease an expat into the city or the culture.  My previous experience in Russia hadn’t prepared me for this in the least.  The loneliness was the worst—days and weeks stretched out before me with nothing in them, and I was very afraid.  Larry had placed the fear of God in me about being out at night by myself and I didn’t know what I would do when it started getting dark at 4:00 in the afternoon.  I didn’t know anyone in the city and I didn’t know my part of the city at all.  I knew my way around downtown and the immediate surround, but I couldn’t even figure out how to get a bus to the Metro, much less get downtown on it.  I felt as though I were drowning and didn’t know how to come up for air.  The Russian part of my brain had gone on strike and my fear was eating me up.  I remember the day I ate the last of the pears.  I thought, now I have to leave and make my way and hope for the best.  It was with great trepidation that I locked my apartment after those four days, and went out in search of food.  

The Art of Breathing Freely

Another of my favorite movies of all time is Sunshine, the tale of three generations of a Jewish family in Hungary, beginning in the late 19^th century on up through the 1960s.  Ralph Fiennes brilliantly plays all three generations of the main male character and Jennifer Ehle and her mother, Rosemary Harris, play the other main character, Valerie, over time.  The film chronicles the many peaks and valleys that form part of being a (mostly) secular Jew in Europe at the turn of the 20^th century, as well as a wonderful telling of early 20^th century Eastern European development and history.  We watch as Hungary transforms from a Byzantine-style monarchy to a modern, albeit Communist, state.  When I was teaching as part of my PhD program I showed part of this film to my students because it clearly showed many of the themes we covered in the history of 19^th and 20^th century Europe.  One of the final lines of the film, about the character of Valerie, is that she alone had mastered the art of breathing freely in a repressive society.

I think about that line quite often.  It has echoed in my head frequently this fall, as I’ve felt a constant pressure in my chest.  It is a weight that makes my shoulders hunch over and my diaphragm contract.  I find it hard to draw a deep breath most of the time, and have to remind myself to push back against the weight of it. I know it is stress.  The fullness in my chest is the stress of two children under age 2, plus an older child who isn't to the Age of Usefulness yet.  It is the weight of getting the two little ones out of the house every day to pick up Piglet from preschool via the bus or cab.  It is the stress of getting dinner on the table every night while at least two of the three children scream at me for an hour while I do so.  It is the constant neediness of the two little ones, and the constant vigilance required to keep the older one from tearing the house apart.  It is the weight of having a colicky baby who wants to nurse 12-16 times a day.  It is the absolute sleep deprivation.  It is the literal weight of double baby wearing, which I do on a daily basis because it is easier and faster than hauling a stroller or letting the (relatively) new walker explore the city while I run after him with the baby strapped to me.  I had a vivid lesson in why this is a bad idea this morning as I let Boo down to walk a little while as we waited for a holiday lights show to start downtown.  He wandered around about 4 feet in front of me for a little while, but soon bored of that and took off beyond the rope barrier.  In my haste to catch him before he got lost in the crowd, I tripped getting around the barrier and went down hard.  I caught Boo and dragged him back to where we had been waiting and gave him a few more minutes of wiggle time before giving up and chucking him on my back once more.  That brought the total weight of the little people on me close to 40 pounds.  The weight is well distributed between the two ERGOs, and most of it goes down to my hips like a hiking backpack, but it is still a lot of weight to lug around day after day.  There is the stress of the bedtime routine, when my husband and I chase down both boys and literally wrestle them into pajamas night after night while Birdie screams her head off.  (Or, alternately, I sit in a chair and nurse Birdie for the nth time that day while my husband does the wrestling and I listen to the chaos from the other room, unable to do a single thing about it).  It is having more children than hands.  Sometimes I feel as though I never fully rid myself of that extra weight at the end of the day, and climb into bed bowed low by the fullness of my days. 

Today I went to pick up my older son from preschool without the other two children, a rarity for me.  Piglet got out at 1:00 and I had my sitter for the afternoon.  As I walked down the sunny street with a cold wind blowing at my back, I remembered the reasons I like living in the city—the hustle and bustle of the streets, the ease of movement, and the little corner shops and restaurants.  I looked up as I walked and breathed deeply of the cool air, feeling the rush fill my lungs, and the pressure in my chest eased just a little.  Temporarily free of the physical burden of motherhood, I was able to remind myself that these years are fleeting, and some day soon, I will be able to take a deep breath without having their constant need grinding against me.  But those years are still in the future, and I can’t live into them now; I have to learn how to breathe freely in this present moment.  And so I will remind myself to look up more often, and to take a deep breath, even as I shoulder the forty pound burden of my days.   

Quick Takes, Hospital Edition

--1--

This week brought a bit of excitement as Birdie's sickness escalated to the point that we ended up in the hospital for overnight observation on Wednesday.  We thought she might need oxygen or IV fluids, but ended up needing neither.  On the one hand, that is good--she is pretty little to be needing such serious interventions--but on the other hand, it means that the diagnosis the doctors are going with (bronchiolitis) means we can't do anything for her medically speaking.  We just have to wait it out and listen to her wheezing and coughing and generally sounding awful.  She is doing better today and isn't fighting for breath as much as she was before we went to the hospital, but it is still hard.  

--2--

I'm running on fumes after so many interrupted nights, first with Boo (who still has a cold and is congested), and then with Birdie.  I'm beginning to think I will never sleep again.  

--3--

Did I mention that I'm sick and tired of all the sick in our house?  Please someone make it go away.  

--4--

My post on Christmas traditions is over at Conservamom's blog.  Because we are on the Julian calendar, we are still mid-Advent, as Christmas falls on January 7 for us.  

--5--

We had a nice St. Nicholas Day celebration on Monday, complete with coins in the shoes and a small gift for each of the boys.  I had wanted to give the gifts at breakfast, but due to a shipping screw up by amazon (when you pay extra for overnight shipping, it means OVERNIGHT, not Saturday delivery), I didn't get one of the gifts until Monday.  But it all worked out in the end.  Piglet loved his purple shirt and Boo is learning how to work the big knobs of the farm puzzle.  We did have a small kerfluffle over the puzzle, as Piglet couldn't understand that the gift was for Boo and it was not, in fact, all for him, but as the days have gone by, the boys seem to have worked it out.

--6-- 

When he is ready to get up in the morning (on those rare mornings that we don't have to wake him up before he's really ready), Piglet has a habit of shouting at the top of his lungs, "Papa!  I'm all done with bedtime!"  He repeats this shout until one of us (usually my husband) goes and gets him.  Since Boo is attaining vocabulary at an astonishing rate just now, it was only a matter of time until we heard it in chorus.  Today was the day.  "Papa!  All done bedtime!"  At least we don't have to worry about not hearing them in the morning.

--7--

We have a great pediatrician.  I mean, great.  She is extremely available by phone and e-mail.  She does all her scheduling online so if you have a sick kid at 3 a.m., you can make a same-day appointment right then rather than waiting for business hours and praying you are the first in line to call for a sick appointment.  She keeps up on the latest research, and is open to alternative methods of treatment.  She has a school-age daughter, so she still remembers how tough the toddler years are and is able to offer moral support.  She makes house calls for the first postpartum baby check.  She calls to check up on kids who are or who've been sick, and, the best thing, she is three blocks away.  We are so grateful for her, especially after the drama of this week.  I initially debated whether to include her in our list of people outside the family that we gift, but after this week, I decided she definitely goes on the list.  I decided to squeeze time out of a rock and make a set of thank you cards for her, packaged in a nice box.  I'm still working on the box (as boxes require math, and I tend to screw them up the first few times I try, especially when I'm beyond tired, as I am now), but here's what the card looks like.  I adapted the design from two other cards I saw around the blogosphere.  I'm loving that Triple Treat Flower--it is so easy to use, and with the three punches, really packs a wow-factor when you start layering.  (Oh, and you can get it for free during Sale-A-Bration, which starts January 24).  

Go see Jen for more Quick Takes.

Christmas Traditions

Hey gang, I'm writing about Christmas traditions today over at ConservaMom.  Would you mind popping over there to have a read?  Pretty please??  Thanks. And to tease your interest, here is a photo from the post:

Total awesomeness from Christmas Day, 1987.

Note: Elia is having a few issues with her blogger template, so the text is a little small.  She is working on it.  Check back later today.  Everything is working now.

7 Quick Takes, Mid-December Edition

Update: I figured out that the Orwellians over at Google want everyone to update to the new blogger interface, and so made the old one unworkable.  The new one is nice, but I'm always leary of tech changes, so didn't change until now.  I've updated this post to include photos and links.  Thanks for stopping by!

--1--

Got my Christmas cards out this week (finally). We have good friends in Chicago who send an annual laughfest of a Christmas letter every year, and I kept waiting for their letter to arrive so I could have some inspiration for my own attempt at wittiness, but time was drawing close, so I figured I better just get at it. So my letter this year is only sort of funny.

--2--

Can I just say enough with the sickness already? We haven't had one sick-free day in this household since Birdie was born and I'm just weary of it. And it being only mid-December, we probably have several more months of this mess to go. Right now all three kids have terrible colds, and I think I'm coming down with something too. My husband thought he was maybe getting sick last night, but he seems fine this morning.

--3--

We had our first parent-teacher conference this week for Piglet. It went well--he is doing well in preschool, able to keep up with the work and so forth. Which is good, given all his issues, but he is also in a class with kids who are around age 2.5 and he is almost four, so that is somewhat discouraging too. He does pick up on things quickly and is doing well with the routines, so that is something too.

--4--

I was asked to guest post over at Conservamom this coming week, so I guess I'd better get cracking on that post. It is about our Christmas traditions, so I won't bore you with the details here. Just check her blog this coming week.

--5--

Peapod/ meal planning update: We are still enjoying our Peapod grocery delivery service. It has made things somewhat easier in the food department. I'm still doing okay in the meal planning, but I couldn't keep up with cooking a week's worth of meals every Saturday. It was nice while it lasted, but Birdie cries too much, and my husband is in the throes of another Supreme Court case and doesn't have time to take care of the kids while I cook. So I'm doing the daily scramble to get dinner on the table every night by 5:30. Usually two of the three children are screaming, and I have to wear Boo on my back while I cook or he is just a monster, but that's life for now. I keep hoping it will get better. sigh.

--6--

Nope, I got nothin'.

--7--

Wanted to show you a card, but Blogger's toolbar totally disappeared and I don't have the time or mental energy to try and make it work (which is why there are no links on this post either. (Sorry Jen).  

So here's the card:

I made it a while back, but never got around to posting it.  I didn't come up with the original idea, but tweaked a few details.  I like gatefolds but never remember to make them.

Quick Takes, Random Meme Edition

--1--

Saw this meme on Facebook and had to share. I'm still laughing. (So is my husband, who usually doesn't find that sort of thing funny).

--2--

Our dear housemate, and Boo's godmother, left last Friday. She lived with us for about four and half months, and while we knew at the outset that it would be temporary, the end came sooner than we thought. (It is a long story, but she rejoined her husband in Vienna and now awaits the birth of their daughter in early February). We miss her a lot and the house seems different without her in it. (I can't say it is quieter because she is so quiet, but it is different).

--3--

One of the threads of my ancestry is Irish, and I noticed last week that there is a group of Orthodox Celts that sing traditional Irish songs. Go Irish!

--4--

I think omphalos might possibly be the funniest word I've ever heard. (For the non-Greek speakers out there, it means belly button). So let's all sing it together now! "Ompha-omphalos, you're oh, so fine. Ompha, omphalos, I'm so happy that you're mine." (Thanks Sandra Boynton).

--5--

I was going to write this thing about cab drivers in the city, specifically African cab drivers, but then I had the wildest cab experience of my Philly life this week (I can't say of my life, since I had some seriously wild cab rides in Moscow and Bishkek) I got a driver who was Turkish, I think, and while he was perfectly polite, he drove like a maniac, played his traditional music (not loudly, but was enthusiastic about singing and dancing along), and generally seemed like he was making the most of his cab driving experience. More power to you, Mr. Cab Driver.

--6--

I'm writing this post at 6 a.m., after having been up most of the night following my colonoscopy prep. Suffice to say, the last 24 hours have been miserable, what with me running to the bathroom every five minutes because of having to drink clear fluids only during the day, nursing a baby, starving and feeling nauseated at the same time, and then being up all night running to the bathroom because of the Miralax prep. I slept on the couch in my office just to be closer to the bathroom. I have to report in at 7 a.m., so I thought since I was up nursing the baby anyway, I'd get my Quick Takes done and posted, since I'm pretty sure I'm going to be in rough shape this afternoon.

--7--

I have been working a bit this week, but mostly it has been prepping for my class at The Expressive Hand on Sunday afternoon. I'm teaching a class on holiday cards, so if you live in the Philadelphia area, I believe there is still time to sign up. You can find more information HERE.

I realize the card above has nothing to do with the holidays, but I've not photographed the cards for the class yet, and I made this one a few weeks ago and think it is pretty. It is a composite of several cards I saw around the blogosphere and liked.

Bonus:

Saw this one on FB and had to smile. It doesn't jive with my memories of Russian babushkas, but I love it, nonetheless. Babushkas of the world, UNITE!

Go see Jen at Conversion Diary for more Quick Takes.

Another Reely Qwel Post

Okay, so I said I had made a couple more boxes of cards? This is the other version I made. I used the (retired) Autumn Spice designer paper, and the coordinating Day of Gratitude stamp set. I didn't actually buy this paper last year when it was current, but bought it earlier this fall on the clearance rack for the Big Scrapbook Project. I used a few sheets out of it, but then had so much leftover, I thought I better make a good dent in it!! The paper is heavier weight than our normal dsp, and it was great for this project. The Day of Gratitude stamp set gives a different look from the more vintage-y Spice Cake versions, but I like it very much! I love this format--the box with six coordinating but unique cards inside. It keeps me from getting bored. I have to figure out a slightly larger format to accommodate a few more cards--it would be nice to have a set of 10, for example.

I made two of these--one for a neighbor as a thank you gift for helping out with preschool pick up and drop off a lot this fall (her daughter goes to school with my son and they've been such a help this fall, filling in the gaps when we needed a little extra help here and there), and one for my goddaughter as a belated birthday/namesday gift. (Hi, Karen! Your gift is in the mail!!)

I do have to apologize for the lighting on the photos--I was experimenting with a new lighting set up on my light box, and I'm not really happy with it. It's okay in a pinch, I suppose, for those weeks of gray weather when I can't get decent light from the outside to come in through the window to back light my box, but I think I'll try to stick to photographing on nice days in the future. I know I should just bite the bullet and get some decent photo lights, but I don't have room for a permanent set up, and the idea of having to store one.more.thing in this house just drives me batty. You can read a bit more about my storage adventures at my other blog.

My lovely husband spent several hours last night reorganizing and cleaning out the basement, and I'm so happy with the results. It wasn't really that we had so much stuff down there, but the space is small, and we were using it somewhat inefficiently. Now it is better. I've spent the last few days going through our few closets, trying to weed out things and reorganize upstairs a bit. I'm hoping to make a big Goodwill run this coming weekend after my procedures are all finished.

This card I CASEd (copy and share everything) from Ilina Crouse. I changed the sentiment and simplified the card a tad, but otherwise, it is her basic design. The other cards were tweaked from other designs I saw around the web.

On “Stuff-ism,” Wardrobe Edition

One of my favorite movies (and books) is The English Patient. I love the book for its prose—Michael Ondaatje has a way with the English language that makes me want to weep for its beauty (and also make one despair if one is an aspiring writer…) The movie dovetails neatly with the book, and is one of the better screen translations I’ve seen, giving visual flight to Ondaatje’s poetic turns of phrase. (The movie also helps to give bones to Ondaatje’s work, as he is fond of pronouns in place of proper names, and one can sometimes get lost in the various storylines going on as a result). I have dozens of quotes from this book in my quote book, but my favorite is this passage:

“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves.

I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.”

This passage seems (at least to me) to capture the essence of a simple life, without the dead weight of accumulated physicality. In other words, we take ourselves through our lives, but not our stuff. One of the things I love most about the main character, Count Lazlo d’Almasy, is that he fits the essential contents of his life into a knapsack. At the end, his life’s possessions boil down to a volume of Herodotus. How lovely to be so unencumbered. On the day I moved to Moscow, when my entire life’s possessions fit into two suitcases and a carry on, I felt very light and free. I now spend a lot of time and energy trying to recapture that lightness by regular purges of stuff, toy culls, clothing sorts, and the like, but it never seems like enough. There is always more creeping in the door, and I admit to being as susceptible to clever adverts as the next person. Sometimes consumer goods really do make my life easier, but I’m finding that most of the time, it just adds to the physical and mental clutter of my home. I long for more simplicity in my life, and I keep trying to figure out the best way to achieve that in terms of the “stuff” we have in our lives.

For those of you that follow my other blog, you might think this post a little ridiculous, as my other blog is about my stamping business (with bits of general life thrown in for good measure), and my business is somewhat acquisitive by nature. Acquisition, and the conflicting desires of it, are the aspect of my business that I struggle with the most—how much to buy, making sure I’m using what I’m buying (and not simply acquiring for its own sake, which is tempting, given the regularity with which new products are introduced by my company). I also admit to developing a bit of a fashion sense in the last year or so, and have overindulged my fashion budget a bit this year, particularly during this stressful immediate post partum period where I’m stuck in a chair nursing a baby for hours and hours a day with a mouse in my hand while the older children are fighting, or screaming, or both. You might even think I’ve lost my sanity, as I divulge some of the weird compulsions in my head. That’s okay. It’s my weird place, and I’m fine with that.

I had this idea a few years back that I would only own one pair of shoes. I decided my thrifted Danskos were going to be the pair. I started looking at the rest of my shoes and was horrified to realize that I fit the average American woman’s shoe quota of nine pairs. I have this weird scenario that plays in my head where I’m living in extremis somewhere (usually during a war) and have to make do with one pair of shoes, preferably a pair that can withstand a lot of hardship. In this alternate mental reality, those extra eight pairs of shoes seem quite extravagant and silly. One of the odd by products of being a historian and keeping it all alive in my mind, I suppose. Then I remind myself that I’m not living in a war zone, or having to walk back home from Siberia or some such, so it is all right to have more than one pair. I’ve (mostly) given up on the one pair of shoes thing. I have about 10 pairs right now, but I wear them all at various times of the year, and am trying to relax about the whole thing.

I fight regularly with the contents of my closet, and being in my childbearing years is particularly frustrating in this way. I store a whole separate wardrobe of maternity clothes (under the bed) that makes me feel mentally that I have twice the clothes I really do. I constantly feel the urge to purge in my closet, but usually end up pruning too much, and then need a few things to keep my wardrobe functional. It is a mental battle between feeling like I should just own two black dresses (nursing friendly, of course!) and accessorize, and feeling like I want variety in my closet.

About six months after my husband and I got married (and had moved cross country twice in that period of time), I decided to do battle with my closet. I made a list of all the pieces of clothing that I owned, categorized by type. Then on a separate page, I made a list of all the categories, and decided how many items should be in each category. Then I had to make some decisions. If I was allowing myself 3 daily dresses, 3 sweaters, 4 long sleeve and 4 short sleeve shirts, 3 skirts, 2 sets of pajamas, and a few dressy dresses (I don’t remember the exact numbers right now, but that is pretty close), I needed to clear out some items that I wore regularly but not all the time. I tried to steer toward items that could be worn year round with a few adjustments and to clear out stuff that didn’t fit or look right on me. At the end of that purge, I felt pretty good about the contents of my closet. But that was before I started having babies and having weight shifts of 30-50 pounds every year or so for the last four+ years. I’ve given up the dream of having x-number of any particular item, but rather having a composite of items I really love. I do need to examine my sock drawer. And the nursing shirts that I wear even though they make me feel frumpy. Lately, I’m trying to make note of an outfit that I love when I wear it so that I will end up with a mental rolodex of great outfits and not feel like my closet has too much or too little. What makes me feel like I’m overflowing with clothes is that our clothing storage is pretty ridiculous. I remind myself that my entire daily wardrobe fits into an absurdly small closet (the closet has room for about 14 hangers, tops), plus three drawers. I’m trying to make peace with it.

The thing I keep reminding myself is that simplification does not mean having no stuff. It does mean shifting the chaff, and distinguishing the two can be difficult for me given my whole d’Almasy knapsack ideal. I’ve also come to the great conclusion that it is better to spend a bit more on one quality thing than to spend small amounts of lots of cheaply made things. I don’t know why it took me so long to come to this conclusion. I think it was when I realized that I’m dressing my daughter in the same 3 or 4 well made dresses from Land’s End and LLBean most of the time. I’m still trying to come up with a master wardrobe list for everyone in the family, but it is a work in progress. Basically, the master list is the amount of clothing a person needs for a laundry cycle (which currently maxes out at about 5 days more for machine capacity reasons rather than ran-out-of-underwear reasons). The boys’ wardrobe looks like this (more or less):

2-3 pairs jeans

2-3 pairs pants (that can be worn to church or any time)

4-5 long sleeve t shirts

2-3 sweaters

1 sweatshirt

2 long sleeve button downs for church

1 sweater vest

(4 long sleeve onesies for M as undershirts in winter)

2 pairs tights for long underwear in winter

2 pairs leggings for long underwear in winter

5-6 pairs socks

7-10 pairs underwear (for H)

2-3 winter pjs

2-3 summer pjs

4-5 short sleeve tshirts

4-5 pairs shorts

Daily shoe (fall/spring shoe)

Crocs (summer shoe)

Rain boot (winter shoe)

I’m still working out Birdie’s master wardrobe, but it is mostly dresses and tights and onesies for under the dresses right now. I just need to figure out how many of each she really needs to get through a laundry cycle.

So while I think I have to let go of my knapsack dreams and get on with the reality of living in a household with three small children, I will continue to strive for simplicity in our wardrobes. I’m going to resolve, once again, to be more careful about our clothing purchases, and reconsider everything that comes through the door. I need to remind myself that less is more, and quality trumps quantity. I need to remember that simplicity starts in the mind. I will choose to consume less, and be content with what I have. I’m sure I will fail, and that I will need to revisit my wardrobe as well as the contents of my household on a regular basis. I will have to make this choice again and again, but simple isn’t always easy. But it is always worth it.

7 Quick Takes

--1--

Next Friday I'm having an endoscopy and colonoscopy. I have to get an endo about every two years for a chronic GI condition I have, but this is my first colonoscopy. I'm not worried about the procedure, but I am dreading the prep. I did a colonoscopy-type prep a few years ago before a minor surgery and it was Not.Fun.At.All. But I need to get to the bottom of the chronic stomachaches I have, and this is one of the ways to figure it out. (The gold standard for my sort of complaint is a stomach emptying study, which I've been trying to get done for about 2 years, but since it involves nuclear medicine, I need to be a) not pregnant, b) not nursing, and c) not picking up little children for up to 48 hours after the procedure. Since I've been pregnant or nursing the last two years, and I have little children that need picking up All.The.Time, that test ain't happenin' any time soon. le sigh.

--2--

I was going to write a whole rant about skinny jeans because until two days ago, I had yet to find a skinny jean that wasn't low- or mid-rise, and frankly, either of those rises is terrible on my figure. Can you say "instant muffin top?" Awful. Plus I'm pulling my pants up all the livelong day, which is terribly annoying. I got the Loft order I wrote about last week and everything was All. Wrong. The shirt was too tight in the arms, the sweater was too scratchy and frankly unflattering on me, and the jeans, well the rise was too low. (I returned everything to the store). I was ready to rant about the whole fashion industry's skewed sense of real women's proportions. And by real women, I mean women who are above age 17, not shaped like coat hangers, and have possibly had a few children with the hips to prove it. But then. I found myself returning something to Old Navy this week, and while I've generally sworn off Old Navy for a variety of reasons not worth going into here, after I returned what I needed to return, I found myself gazing at the jeans wall. And finding the Platonic ideal of a skinny jean. Enter the Sweetheart skinny in gray. They are possibly the most comfortable jeans evah. And for $25, not a huge investment. The fabric is insanely soft, waist lies flat in the front, the rise is high enough that the jeans aren't constantly falling down, and while they gap a bit in the back (all jeans do on me), I simply put my dapper snapper on the back and fixed that problem. So yay for great skinnies!

--3--

We are less than a week into the Nativity Fast and I'm already fatigued by the limited food choices available to me for meal planning. (For those who don't know, we observe the fasting rules of the Orthodox Church, which mean eating vegan about 2/3 of the year. While I'm exempt because of nursing and my extensive food allergies, I still cook vegan dinners on fasting days, but our repertoire is pretty limited because of said allergies). I even considered eating the stir fry I made for everyone else yesterday because I love Chinese food and miss tofu with soy sauce and sesame oil so much. The wonderful smell about drove me mad. But I tried to content myself with Bird's Nests from Trader Joe's with a token amount of soy dipping sauce. I still got a roaring intestinal upset that hit at about 3 a.m., so probably not going to try tofu yet. My lovely goddaughter sent me a whole bunch of new recipes to try for the fast, but I'm stressed out enough about life in general that I can't quite tackle the pile yet, even though I'm very grateful for her thoughtfulness and care. I keep trying to come up with a meal rotation schedule for the fast, but I just don't have enough flexibility with the handful of recipes that work right now for fasting days to do so. So our meal routine for the next forty days is going to be pretty monotonous. But I suppose that is as it should be. I wish I could stop feeling so overwhelmed by it, though.

--4--

I'm reading Simplicity Parenting right now and I really appreciate so much of what he has to say. A lot of it is stuff we already do, like keeping our toy collection very small, and not having a television in the house, and keeping computers away from where the children are, severely limiting processed foods in their diets, keeping sugar to a minimum, etc., but I can tell by how my children behave that they are stressed much of the time (they are all high needs, high intensity, high energy kids), and I wish I figure out the magic button that would make our home life less stressful for everyone. I'm to the point that I keep looking around and wondering when the real grown ups are going to show up and start picking up the pieces. And then I remember, oh wait, I am the grown up now. This is real life.

--5--

On the eve of the fast, I made Loaded Baked Potato Soup and it was awesome. We had leftover stuffing from Thanksgiving and the soup was strangely good as gravy with the stuffing. Starch on starch, that's my kind of meal!!

--6--

I've made several of these gift boxes of cards in the last few weeks for clients and as gifts for friends, and I've really enjoyed that. I used different papers and stamp sets for a few of them; I'm hoping to post that in a few days. I have another project in mind using the Domestic Goddess suite that I'm super excited to make, but might need to wait until January, depending on how the rest of the month shakes out. Stay tuned. Need a nice gift for a friend or colleague? Contact me through my etsy shop and I'll set up a custom listing for you. Please order by December 15 for on time Christmas delivery.

--7--

My arms are tired and my hips ache. Between the demands of Birdie and Boo to be held all.the.time, I can't keep up. My poor introverted internal self is starting to have convulsions. But a friend gave me her ERGO today, so I'm now the proud owner of not one but two ERGOs, so now I can double baby wear in (relative) comfort. My double wearing system before now was to use our Belle Baby Carrier in the front, put our ERGO on for back carry, strap Birdie on the front, then tuck Boo onto my back, but the Belle isn't the most comfortable thing out there, and Birdie doesn't really care to have her legs dangling out and fusses more when she's in it. I'm kind of tired of baby wearing in general at this point, but don't see a way around it short of putting up with even more crying than I already do (which is considerable, let me tell you). It is easiest way to get out about with the two little ones right now since we limit our city driving and use the bus a lot.

--8--

Bonus quick take, because I thought it was funny (and apropos of the season), the five best toys ever. You're welcome.

Go see Jen at Conversion Diary for more Quick Takes!

7 Quick Takes, Fashion Edition

I could say this was a Thanksgiving edition, but it really has more to do with fashion/home decor, so there you have it.

--1--

(Ignore my horribly puffy face; I just finished a round of prednisone for food allergy issues)

After seeing Liz Stanley's post on what she was wearing to Thanksgiving, I immediately wanted her outfit. This is our first year to have Thanksgiving at our house, and I wanted something easy to nurse in, easy to cook in, and easy to eat in! As Loft was having a 40% off sale, I did order it, but it didn't arrive in time for the big day. Oh well. I'll save it for another day. However. I did end up wearing this super comfortable nursing dress I got earlier in the fall but haven't worn yet. Easy.

--2--

The back of the "Schroeder"

Let the post partum hair loss begin! I have started losing my hair now that Birdie is almost three months old. I find that my hair falls out at alarming rates until I think I will be bald and then it suddenly stops. Hopefully that will be the case this time, because the hair loss is truly amazing. That said, I still have long curly hair and three children under age four, so I'm always looking for interesting (and easy) ways to wear my hair up. I saw this hair style on Stylish White Female's blog last week and I had to try it. I think the Schroeder is going to be one of my go-to styles. (I'm also a recent fan of the double cinnabun).

--3--

I have decorating issues. My mom has this knack for decorating that I didn't quite inherit. I know what I like, and I do decorate, but I find there is a little something lacking in the details usually. It doesn't help that my children basically contrive to take apart my house on a daily basis. So when it came to decorating our Thanksgiving table, well, I did the best I could. And since I thought of it at about 2 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon, I had to make do with the selection at Kmart since I could get there and back quickly on the bus. But I did find a nice fall-ish tablecloth, and I had gotten the placemats at IKEA a few weeks ago. I got the flowers earlier in the day at Whole Foods, but ended up putting them on the dish cabinet behind the table for the meal to make room and allow for conversation. But we had a nice meal nonetheless.

--4--

The other thing I did this year was to order a few key food items from Whole Foods just to relieve some of the cooking burden on me. We didn't have a bunch of people coming (just my mother-in-law and our housemate's sister), but I know with three little children under foot and a mother-in-law who tires easily, I would need all the help I could get in the kitchen. As it happened, the whole time I was getting everything together, Birdie was screaming (at least utnil I put her in the carrier, but then I had to cook over the carrier). But everything was delicious and we had enough food for two complete meals, with a small amount of leftovers, so it all worked out well.

--5--

I eat my pumpkin pie with cool whip, because that is the only meet and right way to eat pumpkin pie, in my opinion. All else is OUTRAGE! (to quote Fr. Vasiliy Vasilievich at The Onion Dome). So it was a nearly unforgiveable offense when my husband stuck the cool whip back into the freezer after the noon meal so that it was frozen when I wanted it for my pie after dinner in the evening. Luckily cool whip defrosts quickly and I was able to have my pie and whip by the time the dishes were done.

--6--

My target.com woes continue. We don't really have enough chairs for our table, and have been slowly adding two at a time as we go along. None of the chairs match, which is fine, given the vintage of our table and my own ecletic sense of order. The most recent set we ordered a few months ago from Target, but they haven't restocked since then, so I thought I would just order something similar to have it for the holiday. The chair set I picked was a bit more money than the original bargain we got, but I thought we should just finish with the chair buying already. The box arrived on Wednesday (perfect timing!), so I opened it up to put it together, and discovered that a) the chair is a barstool height (which was not indicated in the online description) and b) there was only one (despite reviews and pictures to the contrary). I went through the online return process (again) and it didn't work (again), so I called customer service (again) and was put on hold a long time (again) and made a big stink about it being their problem to fix it, and there was no way I was going to return this sucker to the store. So they did something on their end and after several hours, a bona fide shipping label showed up in my inbox, and now everything is fine (I hope).

--7--

In keeping with the fashion theme, this is a card I made a few months ago and sent to my sister as a "break a leg" card for a play she was in. She is so fashionable and into vintage, that I knew she'd love this card. I CASEd it from Nance Leedy.

Go see Jen at Conversion Diary for more Quick Takes!

To Everything a Season

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about timeliness and seasonality. Every year retailers push the “holiday” season longer and longer. One of the malls in the area was fully decorated for Christmas in mid-October, which I think is just ridiculous. Several local radio stations have been playing Christmas music non-stop since late October, and I’m already fatigued by the whole thing.

It seems to me that our society has lost its sense of seasonality. In the natural order of things, there are times to prepare and times to feast. In our consumer culture, there is none of the former, and too much of the latter. Preparation for feasting is important, because you cannot fully savor the feast if there is no fast.

As I grow older, I am more appreciative of the fasting seasons set aside by the Orthodox Church. This doesn’t mean that I find them particularly easy; I don’t. The vegan food requirements are impossible for me right now, what with the state of my food allergies and the requirements of a nursing baby, so I don’t fast strictly.* That is the season of my life right now. But even though I don’t participate fully in the dietary restrictions of the seasons of preparation, I still feel the shift in season. I still need restriction for the rebellion in my soul. I struggle mightily with obedience, and fasting seasons are a good time to examine my sin and keep trying to be better. During fasting seasons, in addition to restraining from animal products, we scale back our social commitments, and eat more simply than usual, avoiding regular sweets and other treats, and making fasting treats a rarity. We try to look inward more, and examine ourselves, to find those sinful parts of our being that lurk in the corners, and try to shine the Light on them and banish them forever. These are life-long tasks, with a natural ebb and flow to them. That is where the change of seasons is useful.

As we approach the Nativity fast (which for those of us on the old-style Julian calendar starts the Monday after Thanksgiving this year), I look forward to quieter moments. I want to step back from the frenetic pace of ordinary life and savor the knowledge that Christ our Savior is coming, has come, will come again, in the understanding of the fullness of time. (I wrote my master’s thesis on the Orthodox understanding of time; you can read an article version in The Road to Emmaus, Winter 2011, Issue #44. Click HERE to order). This time of preparation is good and give balance to the twelve days of feasting that follow the fast. And even though I struggle with fasting meals, I find that at the end of the twelve days, I’m ready to resume our ordinary fasting schedule, and I’m looking ahead to Great Lent, longing to rebalance again with fasting and introspection. And so it goes.

In this season of our lives, we are parents of numerous small children in a small row home. This season means that we must make a lot of restrictive choices for their well-being. It means we cannot help clean up after coffee hour on Sundays because they need to get home for naps and we have an hour’s drive. It means we don’t stay for wedding receptions and count ourselves fortunate to be able to witness the ceremony. It means hosting holiday get-togethers instead of traveling because it is too disruptive for the children (and with three, too expensive!) It means minimal or no Christmas decorations. When we do travel, we plan to stay longer in one place, and allow more time to get where we need to be. It means ordering groceries online instead of shopping the local farmer’s markets regularly. It means changing the bedsheets on an as-need basis rather than on a regular schedule. It means gates and child locks and restricted access to the house. It means staying home rather than going out. It means adhering to nap schedules and being strict about meal planning (and execution!) I could go on and on. This season will not last forever, and someday soon, our children will be old enough to do things for themselves, stay up late on occasion, and help out with the groceries and the chores. The feast of those days to come will be all the sweeter for the fast of these years when they are little.

*Please don’t take my experience as spiritual counsel; talk with your spiritual father about your fasting rule.

Reelly Qwel Post

Remember that old SNL skit with the "reelly qwel" line? I keep thinking about posting this project with Steve Martin saying that line in my head. Anyway, here's my reelly qwel project!

Lookie:

I've been wanting to make one of these for a while, and I had all this Spice Cake dp begging to be used, so I pulled it out and got to work! I used Ilina Crouse's basic idea, and subbed in a few different stamp sets since I don't have Gently Falling or the sentiment stamp set she used. (Thanks for the great inspiration, Ilina!)

Here's the inside when you open it up:

My husband was traveling for work a few weeks ago (and left me alone with the three children--yikes!), and during the course of his travels, stayed with an old colleague from his days at the Supreme Court. They both clerked for Justice Kennedy the same year, and he is now a federal judge on the 9th circuit in Michigan. He asked me to make up some kind of thank you gift for them since they were lovely hosts, so I decided to make a thank you note box (with 6 thank you notes, of course!).

Here are the six thank you notes that were inside:

My "live and learn and then get Luvs" moment on this project was in the box flaps--I meant to have the outer part of the box overlap a bit on the edges rather than having the enclosure flap be flush to the edges, but I miscalculated by 1/8" and it ended up flush. Oh well. It still looked nice, but now I know what to do differently next time. I am definitely going to make this type of project again--it was a lot of fun!

And because you can't send a thank you gift without a thank you note, I made a coordinating thank you card to accompany the box. I love these little quilt cards that are so popular right now--they are fast and easy to make, and look so nice! (As an aside, the texture on the blue circle behind the leaf on this card could easily be accomplished with the Color Spritzer tool--I didn't have mine yet when I made this project or I would have used that instead. The Textured jumbo wheel stood in nicely, though).

Supplies:

Soft Suede, Pool Party, More Mustard, Very Vanilla cs, Spice Cake dp

AfterThoughts (retired), Lovely as a Tree, Occasional Quotes (retired), Autumn Splender stamp sets

Textured wheel

Pool Party, More Mustard, Soft Suede inks

Paper snips

Circle cutter

Big Shot

Circles #2 die

Square lattice folder

Finial press folder

Scallop border punch

top note die

linen thread

sponge

Paper piercing tool/mat pack

corner rounder punch

Pool party ruffled ribbon

sticky strip

bone folder