Thanksgiving 2010

Garden, frozen by the pond

I asked Mae and Bela what they were thankful for, this being that time of year and all. After explaining the best I could what "thankful" meant, Bela decided quickly that her answer was "pizza and friends."

Mae was thankful for Thanksgiving. And Pizza.

We had a wonderful time with my Mom and Dave in Tomah, Wi this year, as well as with my brother Jared and his wife Ivonne and their children,  Fernando and Elijah.  We arrived Thursday mid-morning, my Mom (and Jared) took care of all the meal preparations, and we just sat around and snacked on salami and herring.

Dinner was delicious (as usual), the pecan pie was a-maaaaaaaaa-zing, and the company was great. We took our annual trip over to Hilliker's to get my Mom's Christmas tree and to enjoy hot chocolate by the bonfire.

After we said goodbye on Saturday morning, we headed out to Black River Falls where my parents have a little hunting cabin in the woods, and we drank wine, hiked through the woods, made fairy houses, and glued together pine cone gnomes.

I'm thankful for my family, for good food, for wool yarn. I'm thankful for this time of year when the cold moves in and freezes the landscape in its fading autumn beauty, before the snow hides it all. And I'm grateful for everything that is real and genuine in my life. Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

Dock, frozen leaves in pond

Slings don't work well over winter coats...

Ice and broken collar bones don't mix well either.

Mae naps in daddy's arms

This moment -November 26

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A secret

I had been meaning to let you all in on a secret, but never got around to it. It's Ikea. Yes, that one.

Until recently, I held a mild disdain for the place. Oh sure, clever design, bright scandinavian influence that lures people in with a promise of clean, space efficient, and affordable furniture and accessories. You know, the bed that's a book shelf that transforms to a coffee table that also happens to be half the cost of the take out sushi you ordered last night. And comes in a smaller package.

But I still shopped there occasionally, my righteous self assuaged by their claim to sustainability and fuel efficiency. My wallet eased by their prices on bedding. My appetite by their cinnamon rolls. But I wasn't a true believer until I stumbled across Smaland. 


Did you know that, provided your child is at least 38" tall and potty trained, you can leave them in this sanitized playroom for one hour? For free? The first time I left Mae there I almost couldn't believe it. I thought maybe they would charge me when I picked her up. But instead, they sent me on my way with one of those flashing buzzer things they give you in restaurants when you have to wait for a table. The kind that flashes and vibrates when your table is ready, or alternately when your child urinates in Smaland or your time simply runs out.

Now, something you also probably know about Ikea is that it is completely possible to eat a meal in their cafe, accompanied by endless coffee refills, for under $3.00.

Do you see what I'm getting at? I didn't understand why every exhausted mother and father in the greater Chicago area wasn't in Bolingbrook or Schaumburg EVERY DAY. An hour of free babysitting, and you don't even have to shop. An hour of unadulterated quiet time interrupted only by the eau d' cinnamon roll being pumped by fan throughout the giant store.

So I had been meaning to tell you all about this. I told Bela about it this morning. I decided that today I would go get those frames I needed for some presents I'm working on. I kept her home from school (ok, really I just overslept like a bad mom and decided that rushing to dress her and haul her over there was not worth the stress). I talked it up, I told her how much fun Mae had, I pitted them against each other, making Bela so jealous of Mae's two visits to the magical Smaland that she was practically begging me to take her to Ikea.

I piled them (gently) in the car (Mae broke her collarbone - story later).  It took us an hour to get out there, and shortly after it all fell apart. When we got to Smaland, there was a 35 minute wait because apparently the secret is out. So we passed the time eating gummy mac n' cheese and puree of vegetables in the cafe until a spot opened up for us. The girls skipped to the gates of playtime paradise, deposited their shoes in cute, brightly colored plastic bins, and waited patiently to be let in. I filled out the necessary forms and answered their questions and then they got me.

"Is your daughter wearing any diapers or pull-ups??

Now, Mae used to wear underwear but had so many accidents I said to hell with it and put her back in pull-ups. This was NOT the day to have done that, because apparently pull-ups mean it's a no-go for Smaland. They refused to let us in.


I make it a point to never yell at the employees of any establishment, not even the ones who deserve it. I tried bargaining with the lady:

"They'll only be here for like 10 minutes max."

I tried persuading her:

"The pull-ups are in fact more sanitary. If she were in underwear she'd be leaving a trail of urine wherever she went. Besides, it's not like she ever poops in her pants."

I tried making her feel bad:

"It took us an hour to get here, we've waited an additional 35 minutes for a spot..."

She was not budging. She had that empty "I don't care" stare that I perfected as an employee at Crate and Barrel years ago. And that was when it happened. I didn't break my "no yelling" rule, I remained completely calm. But I DID drop an f-bomb, and it went something like this:

"You have got to be f-bomb kidding me. Right? "

As I swooped my crying kids away from the gate to the magical kingdom  and tried to avoid the stares of the shocked parents, I became drenched in a post mac n' cheese / chocolate cake /swearing at a stranger sweat and we high-tailed it out of there.

F'ing Ikea.

This Moment - November 19

Every Friday Amanda Soule over at Soulemama.com posts an image from her week that needs no words of explanation, a visual representation of one of the many important moments from the last 7 days of our lives. She encourages fellow bloggers to do the same. Here's mine. Where's yours? 

Christmas list

 Bela made her Christmas list tonight. She sat in the kitchen with me while I made dinner (chard soup with lemon and rice for them; sashimi for us. And no. They didn't like it.) She perched up there on her tall kitchen stool and carefully sounded out the words (Mom only helped with those pesky 'y's and the irritating silent 'e's and double 'oo's.)




This year's list is more concrete than years past. When asked what she wanted for Christmas just a few months before her 4th birthday, I believe the answer was "orange". And "pink." So this year she has made the list more, well, shoppable.

Bela's list: Play food, (cash) register, chocolate, nesting dolls, candy cane, make up (!), tea cup

Mae's list (as transcribed by Bela): Unicorns, Horses, beds (for the unicorns and horses to sleep in)

Only I don't always like to "shop" Christmas. Every year I set out with the intention of making most of the presents. Every year I get a little bit closer to my goal. Of course, I can't control what Santa does, but I hear those toys are made by hand as well. So he fills her stocking with fairy tea cups, markers, chocolate coins and candy canes, and usually puts something doll related under the tree for her.

I finish the Fall semester in two short weeks, and fully plan on spending every day from December 4th until December 24th in full gift making mode. As much as I would love to talk about my plans, the few of you who read this blog are the intended recipients of most of these holiday treats, so I will show a sampling of the raw materials. The "before", if you will. And hopefully, I'll get some snap shots of the "after" as well.

Ok, not a Christmas gift, but something I just finished the other day for Bela.

For a special project, from Purl

Ditto that.

Oh so many things to be done with yarn

Beautiful vintage ribbon/trim from Brooklyn General

A little dress for my littlest

This Moment - November 12

Every Friday Amanda Soule over at Soulemama.com posts an image from her week that needs no words of explanation, a visual representation of one of the many important moments from the last 7 days of our lives. She encourages fellow bloggers to do the same. Here's mine. Where's yours? 

The hills are alive...

My girls love music. I know, who doesn't love music, right? But you don't understand the depth of their love for their songs.

I like to take credit for their profound connection to song, but Chris plays as large (if not larger) a part in this as well. He has the most eclectic play list I've ever seen, and he shares it lovingly with his daughters. The girls are more familiar with his favorites than I am, and I am endlessly entertained by the special way they have developed of labeling these seemingly illogical songs. Since they don't understand all the lyrics, and since the titles mean nothing to them, they have their own way of understanding and requesting them.

 A request for 'The Fairy Song' yields several minutes of Sleepy Head by Passion Pit. When they start talking about 'Collecting Animals', well, they'll take anything from Animal Collective. 'Beverly Kissed the Beast' means they want Ariel Pink's Beverly Kills. 

Animal Collective

Gillian Welch

While Chris and I share some taste in music, I definitely lean towards a style with a bit more Americana to it. A little bit of folk, a lot of bluegrass, a subtle twang of country. Singable vocals, acoustic melody, the kind of music that makes me want to close my eyes and throw my arms open and sing. Loudly. Anyway, as you can imagine, the requests made by the girls when they're in the green Honda (Chris' car) differ from those made in the white Honda (my car).



In the green Honda, at the top of the charts for the last 16 weeks in a row:
1. Fright Night, by Ariel Pink.
     Followed closely and strangely by,
2. Angels of Light (described by Chris as drone goth music)
3. The Bangles' Manic Monday
4. One Touch by LCD Sound System.
5. Graze - Animal Collective

Old Crow Medicine Show

In the white Honda, it goes something more (predictably) like this:
1. Wagon Wheel - Old Crow Medicine Show
2. No One Knows My Name - Gillian Welch
3. We're all in this together - Wagon Wheel
4. Marry Me - Dolly Parton
5. Skinny Love - Bon Iver






Sometimes, our desire to instill a love for music in our children gets us into trouble in the form of inappropriate lyrics that magically draw the attention of these crazy cuties.


Overheard recently in the playroom/bedroom/bathroom/car/SCHOOLROOM? over the last several months:


From Regina Spektor's 'Hotel Song' - Bela, in tune and perfectly copying Spektor's staccato style  "A little bag of cocaine, a little bag of cocaine, so who's the girl wearing the dress?"


From John Prine's 'In Spite of Ourselves' - Mae, almost constantly from June until August, "He ain't got laid in a month of Sundays, I caught him once and he was sniffing my undies"


And, from the same song, and out of the same girl's mouth: "She looks down her nose at money. She gets it on like the Easter Bunny"

John Prine

Oh man. The Easter Bunny. There was no way they weren't going to love that song. 



Now, Chris and I are good parents. We don't condone foul language (unless we are the ones speaking) and we share the common goal of keeping our children as innocent and as sweet as possible for as long as possible. But sometimes, when we hear them sing these very grown up lyrics, we giggle. 

Until they started singing Akon. Bela and Mae went through a fierce Akon phase, mostly due to his song Lonely that features back up vocals by what I can only describe as a cartoon character. But he has other songs--in particular, I want to love you. Only it's not a song about love. It's a song about a stripper, and it's about as nasty as nasty can be. There are two versions, though, to this song. One is simply foul, proffered up to the general public. The other, I can't even link to it's so nasty nasty.

Akon

Every time I hear Bela begin to sing along to the lyrics of this song my entire body starts to twitch violently. As she reaches the chorus I'm near vomiting. And then she sings "I want to LOVE you, you already know, I want to LOVE you."  As I'm scrambling for the ipod, ripping USB cables from computers, pounding on on/off switches, I'm relieved she has just sang this particular version. Because I know something she doesn't know: she was one track away from the dirtiest thing she has ever heard in her entire life. Just listening to that other version would age her 10 years. Instantaneously.

DISCLAIMER #1: She does not know nor understand ANY of the other lyrics to this song. And Chris swears on all that is good in this world that she has never accidentally heard the other, fouler, version.

DISCLAIMER #2: Obviously, none of these images belong to me, and I may be violating copyright by simply including them in my blog. The thing is, I have no idea. But there you have it.

Iconic

Chris and Bela - 2006

When people think of my husband Chris, I'm sure the first thing that comes to mind is an image of him with his camera. Of course.



And then, maybe, that ratty gray coat that used to be blue that he bought on his first trip to Barcelona in 1999. That he still wears.

What else? His beat up cars? The three t-shirts he rotates through year round? His easy smile?

Oh, yes. And his hat. That old acrylic navy and white hat that he allegedly rescued from its slimy, linty prison behind the communal basement washing machine in that apartment he shared on Green Street back in college. Well, he still has it.

I have spent the last several days searching boxes for pictures of him in this hat. If you know him well you know he wears it often, but the thing about Chris is that he is always behind a camera, rarely in front of it. So these pictures have been hard to come by.

For his birthday, I made him a copy of this hat (a warmer, though slightly more flawed, version). Yes, I know his birthday was two months ago, but when the gift is handmade by me I demand a 6-12 month grace period, depending on the level of skill required.

So here you go, the old and the new. And Chris.

Fall 1999

Fall 1999

2000

And now, are you ready for it? The new, flawed, but wool version of this iconic man's iconic hat:

Chris - 11/7/2010

11/7/2010

On dark and chilly nights...

This Moment...

Every Friday Amanda Soule over at Soulemama.com posts an image from her week that needs no words of explanation. She encourages fellow bloggers to do the same. Here's mine. Where's yours? 

El día de los muertos

They say there are 5 stages to grief.
1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Desperate bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

The truth is that there are likely to be twice as many, not that that would matter. I seem to always get stuck alternating between 1 and 4, almost completely bypassing 2 and 3, and never really laying eyes on the elusive 5.

But this is not the point of this post.

Today, the annual celebration of The Day of the Dead draws to a close, and I am once again reminded that in some parts of the world, in the lives of some families, death and loss and pain and grieving are treated very differently.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that I am not, as much as it pains me to say this, a very unique person. I am not different than most. I am your average, run of the mill kind of girl. And I struggle with the memory of my dead. They are easy to remember, and hard to talk about. I like to carry them around in a secret little spot, easily accessible but hardly touched. And because I am very average, I assume that a lot of you also lock it all away in quite the same way.

Now that I have kids this little spot keeps getting illuminated by this giant spotlight. Little girls and boys have a lot of questions, and right they should. They need to know. They need to understand when and why, and who, and what if? It's strange to watch the process, as a mother, dealing with my own loss. We start a conversation about planes, or family, or uncles, or sickness, and it invariably leads to Brian, to Dad. I see them working it out, going from chatty to quiet, from ease to disturbance. I walk with them through their confusion, watch them get sad, answer their questions, and then marvel at the acceptance (#5!) they reach so, so easily.

Were we all like this once? Are some of you like this still?

I'm not. I have been trying to remember them, and share bits and pieces of their lives with my kids. A lot of these bits are personal and I choose not to share them, lest they become less mine. And many of the pieces are not fit for public consumption (Brian and Jared and I had some crazy fun sometimes). 

So here are a few bits, a few pieces, a few images--to be recorded here with the antics of my children, with the adventures of my family. Because they're part of who we are.

Brian, Bela reminds me of you. I wish you could have met her. I'm glad you knew she was on the way. Not only do people seem to generally like her, she really likes people. You were like that. You were so daring, so full of life, and so considerate. You loved to fly, oh-you loved to fly. I only went up with you once but I'll never forget it. Thanks for helping me step lightly around the consequences of many of my bad decisions. Thank you for loving me enough to get mad at me for the silly things I did. Thanks for the phone calls when I was away in Spain, for taking care of my cat, for saying it like it was. For making me laugh. For making me a drink. For spending time with me. You loved those planes since the time you were a little boy, and I guess if you had to leave us early you went in the way that suited you most. 

And Dad, you have been gone almost 15 years now. My girls are missing out. I know they would have loved you in the way that only crazy little granddaughters can: intensely. I have very few pictures left of you, it adds to the mystery that you were for me. My early memories of you are fragmented but sweet, like the wood paneling in this picture. My later ones are fresh and dear. I spent the weekend telling Bela and Mae funny stories about you, but here I'll just say I love you and miss you. 

Bela and Mae, you would have loved these men. I promise I won't stop talking about them. And maybe one day you both can walk ME to mister number five with the ease you find it yourselves.

Celebremos nuestros muertos queridos.

Brian and Me - 1976

Me and Brian - 1977