The Company

I know, two posts back to back. A bit excessive. But this is something I don't want to forget.

Saturday, Chris took Bela to Wandawega (near Lake Geneva) for some overnight ice fishing and some short film filming. Mae and I stayed home and baked and played at the park and watched the Oscars. At some point, I tried to steal some time away so I could sew a new skirt for Mae - an a-line, bias cut cute little floral skirt with a fold over elastic pink waistband.

Anyway, I was fighting with the serger because I wanted to do a rolled hem edge, and I couldn't get that wooly nylon through both the upper and the lower loopers of the machine. Have you ever tried to thread something silky and thick through tiny holes with dry, winter hands? I was frustrated. And then enraged. And then just plain mean. Mae kept coming into my tiny little sewing space, leaning on me, trying to see what I was doing.

Finally, I (politely, in my opinion) said to her: "Mae, I really don't want any company right now. I'm sorry."

She looked at me, a little perplexed, and asked: "What is Company?"

I thought for a minute. "You are, Mae. You're company right now."

She decided that this request was more or less acceptable, though she left my side slowly. When she finally walked away, she looked back at me and said: "The company is leaving the room."

Later, she came back to ask me a question: "Mom? Mom! The company is talking to you!"

I guess you could say I had my hands full of company this weekend.

Lemon skies

If you live in the Midwest, you probably fall into one of two categories: You either make it through the Winter bitching and moaning and drinking large amounts of alcohol, or you go on and on about the character-building-harshness of snow, sleet, and slush. 

I think I definitely used to lean to the latter. And it's true: you can never fully appreciate Spring until you have lived through a harsh winter. In fact, that day, that first warm-ish day in March or April that smells like wet earth and months of freezer burn, that day that tempts you to rip the ugly plastic from the windows of your soul and toss them open and stick your head out there and scream "Oh my goodness I've never been so happy in all my life....!" What, you don't feel that way on that day? On that first, warm-ish day, that first afternoon that signals the end of the harsh Winter and the early beginnings of Spring?

Well, I was going to say that that first gorgeous day was the reason I was still alive, I look forward to it so much every year. I was going to say that it was the key point in my pro-harsh-Chicago-Winter argument, the one where I go on and on about how Winter is the only thing that can truly prepare your soul to enjoy the true beauty of Spring.

But this year I feel like I'm dying and I'm ready to toss my character right into the garbage can and head to Tennessee, maybe Georgia. Chris thinks it's because I've been running more this Winter than I have any other Winter in my life, and my training takes me out into the dark, cold, windy nights where it's not unusual to run under thundering skies in a storm of sleet. My training takes me out into the (very) brisk early mornings by the lake, too, where the wind is so cold it actually burns its way through my lungs, brings copious tears to my eyes, freezes my hair, turns my lips purple.

Needless to say, the girls and I have been desperately searching for something to let us know that our suffering has not been in vain, that Spring really is just around the corner.

The answer: LEMONS.

Lemonade, lemon pound cake, lemon sugar glaze. Lemon, lemon, lemon. And all things yellow. Please. Please. Please let this end. My character is about as built up as it is going to get, at least in terms of weather-induced-character-growth. I just want to open my windows. Feel a little lemon sky on my skin.

Soaked with lemon sugar glaze

This Moment

A moment from our week I want to remember. No words necessary. Happy Friday!

Le Comptoir

If you'll allow me to let my thoughts wander a bit...

Our recent thaw, which revealed for the first time grass and mud long forgotten, is now being covered again with snow. It's cold. I'm wiped out and grading a very large pile of papers, but my thoughts are elsewhere.

In another world, I have a store like this. Or I live near a store like this. Or I get the privilege to visit a store like this.

Sigh.

These are images from Le Comptoir - the store Chris visited for me in Paris last month. Photos from Chris.

Life without TV

The title makes me feel a bit like a hypocrite. I will tell you that for the first two weeks of our TV ban, things went great. It was peaceful, really peaceful. After we cleaned up dinner and got the kids to bed, Chris and I would settle down and listen to audiobooks.

The kids maybe didn't find it quite as peaceful. In the first two weeks, we really tried to get them involved in fun activities, and I'm going to share them with you here. But this last week things really fell apart, and what I have learned is that TV does indeed play a fundamental role in our lives. Enter the sickness of 2011.

We just spent the last 7 days completely ill. By Saturday Chris couldn't even get out of bed. Bela, whose first fever appeared on Tuesday, had 103 as of Sunday. Crazy. We made it all week long without TV, and then we hit Friday. I was sick. Chris was sick. Bela and Mae were starting to feel better. We were in a pickle. We turned on the TV.

Ok. So I got that off my chest. But take a look at some of the things you can do without a television in your lives. Enjoy:

1) Board games. Lots of board games. And other games. Lately, we've been into Uno Moo, Memory, I Spy Eagle Eye, Jenga, Hide and Seek, and a weird game Chris invented called "touch the monster's face while he tickles you and fairies will come out of his mouth." Or something.

2) Cook with the kids.

 3). Homemade bird feeders. No peanut butter and pine cones for us this year. Who knew bacon and bacon fat were good for so many things?!

strained bacon fat

Cookie cutter mold, pumpkin seed, sunflower, millet

slightly sludgy fat, icy cold pan, wax paper, heart mold

add yummy birdiness, which sinks to middle, then later coat in seeds, poke hole,  freeze, push out of mold, hang, watch. 

 4) Find a bunch of crap around your house and look at it under a microscope. Spit. Blood. Apple bits. (Ok, this stuff wasn't actually just lying around our house).

 5) PLAYDOUGH!

 6) Bead necklaces.  I've never been gifted so much jewelry in my life.

7) Watch two fat cats fight over one tiny cat bed.

8) When all else fails, ignore kids completely and just do what you want.

lace detail on Spring sweater for Bela

a teeny tiny hooded jacket, in progress

This scarf - a work in progress. For me. 

Sick

When you have a fever and chills, the best place to be is on a sheepskin on top of a radiator. 

Last Sunday, in an attempt to entertain the kids, Chris took Bela ice fishing and I took Mae ice skating. Mae has a thing about ice skating. She begs for it. She cries and throws fits. She really loves to go ice skating. But the minute she gets on the ice she's good for about 1.25 turns around the rink and she is totally satisfied, ready to take off her skates and call it a day.

This time we went to Millennium Park, so after our 7 minutes on the ice we could at least have a snack near Lurie Garden and check out the bean. Kids' fascination with the giant "bean" is so charming. They go nuts there. Mae is no different. She loves to run while she watches her reflection, walk slowly up to the reflective surface with her hands outstretched, not quite sure when she'll actually make contact with her mirrored self. She did this over and over, and then a little boy tried to join her. "STOP!" the dad yelled. "Don't touch that bean, it's filthy. You'll get sick." I, of course, rolled my eyes and encouraged Mae to do everything but lick it, muttering under my breath "overprotective".

Flash forward 24 hours.

Since Monday at approximately 3:30 pm the females in my family have been horribly, horribly, sick. Lucky for Chris - the one and only male in our house--he seems to have escaped unscathed. Secretly I think this demonstrates his lack of dedication to the family unit, but I'll let him off the hook this once.

Patient zero is Mae Abigail "the bean" Strong. When I picked the girls up from school on Monday, I discovered Mae on the couch with a fever. She had woken from her nap in that state, and I quickly took her home, wondering if it were the nasty subway or perhaps the bean itself that started all this sickness. Her fever spiked at about 103 that night, and I slept with her because I thought it would be easier than having her - in her sick state - coming to me repeatedly in the night. So I wiped her nose and kept her hot water bottle hot and got her water to drink and cooled her forehead through the night.

Tuesday. I don't teach on Tuesdays so staying home with Mae was a no brainer. I had no way, however, to get Bela to and from school, so she stayed home as well. Now remember, this is February, and we are on a TV ban. Tuesday was a very, very long day. And to make matters worse, Bela spiked a fever that night. Now both girls were sick and I was calling around to find subs for my Wednesday classes.

Wednesday. We made a giant bed on the floor and listened to Shel Silverstein's audiobook readings of A Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends no less than 8 times each all the way through. I pumped them full of ibuprofen and took them to JoAnn's for some emergency craft supplies. We were going to need something to get us through the rest of the day. And then we got home, and that is when the worst thing imaginable happened. I got a fever. 

Now, Mae often asks me things like: "When I'm a baby again can I drink from a bottle?" Or, "when I'm a baby again will I say goo-goo?" Some days I play along, but some days I choose to gently remind her that she will not be a baby again. "No one can turn into a baby again, Mae." 

But I have to admit that I lied. While my children have turned out to be quite the stoic invalids, their mother actually and factually turns into a baby again when she gets sick. 

I am the worst. The slightest fever sends me shivering for bed. Last night, as I was scanning lesson plans and desperately searching for subs once again for my Friday classes, I was actually in tears I was so miserable. Boo. Hoo. Anyway, you can imagine how things began to deteriorate in the Strong household.

Thursday. Bela didn't seem to have a fever and said she missed her friends at school. Me, wanting a day to convalesce at home with just Mae, urged Chris to drive her to school. Within one hour, however, her school called home. Her teacher described her as grey and little, and sleeping on a little sheepskin bed while all the kids played. Chris went to get her. Bela had 103. And like clockwork, Mae's fever spiked back up once more. As well as my own. 

Our JoAnn's purchase - color your own tattoos. 

Friday. We went to the doctor's this morning. I had 102. Bela had 101. Mae was back up to 103. I was preparing for the worst - maybe some foreign, rare virus. Swine flu. Something. What I got instead was the embarrassing news that we were all suffering from...are you ready? A cold. 

Needless to say, we are watching TV right now.  Go ahead and judge. I don't plan on moving from this couch until it's time to make dinner.

Maybe that overprotective Dad is on to something. 

this moment - February 18

A moment from our week. No words necessary. Happy Friday!

Divide and conquer...

In an attempt to divide and conquer...

Bela and Chris go ice fishing...

 

 

Mae and I skate at Millennium Park

Maybe next week we will switch.

Wool in the house

Hi. Did I tell you that my brother-in-law, Allen, lives in rural Ohio? And that he has friends who have sheep? And that he knows I'm crazy for wool? Well, he may have unwittingly just provided us with a month-long project to keep two little girls and their Mommy and maybe even their Daddy (who happen to all be on a month-long TV ban) busy through this, the bleakest month of the year.

Last Fall Allen dropped by for a rare visit (did I mention that my kids ADORE him?). He brought two, GIANT bags of freshly shorn wool, all poopy and dusty and smelling sheepy in the most wonderful of ways. And I tucked them away on our back porch because I didn't know quite what I was going to do with them.

For scale: I'm standing on the table looking down at this glorious pile

And now I know. I will order some special soap to wash the poopy, dusty, sheepy from the wool, some brushes to card it, and the girls and I will go to town and try to make some roving.  Maybe I'm in over my head here. The wool you see in  that image above is sitting on my kitchen table, and that is just half of one bag. There is so much more where that came from. And yes, I washed my kitchen table after I put it away.

Overkill? I just think it looks SO COOL.

I envision next Saturday afternoon: the girls and their Daddy and I around the kitchen table, washing the goo and the gunk from the fleece. The girls are giggling and washing away while Chris and I share knowing glances. The mess doesn't bother me. The hours fly by. None of us think about the Fox or the Hound or Tinker Bell or Peter Pan or those crazy folks from Big Love.

We'll see how close it comes to this little fantasy.

In the meantime, take a look at what I've done with the finished products of poopy wool fleece these days. Three new baby sweaters. I know several people with babies on the way and I just couldn't help myself. I can't stop knitting these things, so fast and satisfying. I was a bit impatient for this little photo shoot, though. The sun was shining - as rare as a visit from Uncle Allen, these days. The sweaters aren't blocked properly and the dangling yarns have not been woven in, though they are tucked underneath in an attempt to hide them. Rather productive of me, I might confess. You know what that means...I have a stack of Spanish compositions waiting for me to grade. Gotta keep knitting!

Pattern: Baby Camilla, Yarn: Quince & Co Lark - lichen

My gauge was ever-so-slightly off, and the neck is higher than it should be, But I think it works. Again, it will look better when it's blocked and the underarm seams are sewn.

Pattern: Anna & Heidi Pickles Baby Vest, Yarn - Cascade Alpaca + some hand painted sock yarn whose name now escapes me. I messed up the decreases at the yoke. Darn. Still cute. Will do more.

Pattern: Hannah Fettig's Sock Yarn Sweater, Yarn: ? Stashed sock yarn. No label.

Happy Weekend!

This Moment - February 11

A moment from our month. No words necessary. Happy Friday!

A poem

SNOWSTORM

~A whimsical ditty on parking etiquette

I tried to rise above this year

And place no chairs outside.

My grueling task at hand? To clear

A space for my old ride.

The storm it left ungodly piles

Of snow, heavy and deep.

The drifts they wandered on for miles

But shoveled I that street.

I placed no marker, chair, or broom.

I wanted to keep it clear. 

So please imagine my surprise

to find these boxes here.

Dear Sir or Madam, I declare

we are adult, all grown.

My parking space I gladly share

but do not claim it as your own!

TeleVision

My kids have been fighting with me a lot lately, and it has mostly to do with television. Now, I want to put it out there for the record that I do not believe that TV is evil. I enjoy it very much, I do. You can find me most nights on my little green sofa, knitting, listening to many shows. Comcast On Demand keeps my ears occupied while my hands work away, and I have at my fingertips--besides my needles and yarn-- endless hours of old episodes of Six Feet Under, Big Love, 30 Rock, Frontline, and all things PBS.

That being said, I do think that every moment spent in front of the screen is a moment my girls aren't doing something, well, more interesting. I could go on and on about the things I've read, about the studies that prove that TV stunts the growth of our kids' imagination, their ability to focus, to see a task through, to confront problems creatively. But I can't do it as eloquently as, say, Jane Healy in her book Endangered Minds (check out this link), or the people who put together this little Waldorf site.

On the other hand, I'm fairly certain that the moment I take an all-or-nothing stance and eliminate completely the boob tube,  well I think that would make them just want it all the more. I would rather like to teach them a bit about moderation, about self-control. I don't think I can achieve that by cutting TV out all together.

But things have gotten out of control over here lately and it's completely my fault. I have mistakenly stepped outside the established family limits. I let them watch one thing, and they want two. I give in at two and they demand four. And before you know it, my once orderly Saturday Morning Only rule has been distorted and manipulated to include an extra movie on the weekend, a movie when Mom comes home sick from work on a Friday, a movie when Dad is somewhere in Cairo, and the occasional Friday Night Family Video.

Enough is enough. Bela had a slumber party last weekend to celebrate her 6th birthday. It was strictly a NO TV party, but the minute the girls were out the door my little 6-year-old addict was at my hip, begging. I put my foot down, all big and sloppy and authoritarian like. I went overboard. I took away TV for the entire month of February. It felt good. Kind of scary, in a what the hell am I going to do with them next Saturday morning sort of a way. But good.

And to avoid teaching them about hypocrisy during this meaningful lesson on moderation, self-control, and abstinence, I banned TV for me too. I couldn't take away TV for a month if I had to look them straight in the face every night at bedtime knowing they knew full well that I was on my way to the living room, to my little green sofa, for my daily dose.

Strangely, I feel like I just gained extra hours in my life. What shall we do instead? Oh, I have some ideas, but I won't talk about them here because, honestly, what will I blog about in a few days if I spill my guts now? And if you think I'm crazy, if you think going a month without TV will be difficult, just know that this rule went into affect the minute the super bowl ended, and I'm hoping that the Oscars will be available for my viewing pleasure On Demand, sometime in March.

Well, I'm off to my bedroom, where Chris is waiting for me with David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, audiobook style. I wish I could say that eliminating TV from my life this month would result in more books read, but the truth remains: it's nearly impossible to read while knitting.

Good night.

This Moment - February 4

A moment from our week. No words necessary. Happy Friday!

Snow Day

February blizzard

Chicago 2011

Bela climbs a car

backyard snow cave