Executive decision

Bela has a list of go-to adages and other cliche sayings she likes to use when she's feeling frustrated with her position in life: it's not fair, she always gets her way, you just don't understand, and my favorite, grown ups get to do whatever they want. 

Just to prove her right, Chris and I made a pair of executive decisions recently regarding the current state of affairs in our family. These may or may not have been made after multiple glasses of wine, but they just go to show that, dammit, sometimes grown ups DO get to do whatever they want.

 1. Pardon my language, but screw cloth diapers. For baby #3 it's disposables all the way. Gill grew out of her size small back about 3 months ago and I never bought more. And I'm not going to.

 2. Chris has declared that from here on Gillian Fern, shortened to Gil, shall now be Gillian Fern, shortened to Gill. Double 'l', ya hear? Now, if only I could do whatever I want and take a nap.

Waiting

Mortgage application, all over the floor. This was March.

We're still here, waiting. Cleared to close, waiting for the lawyers involved to fit us in to their busy schedules.

Waiting, waiting, waiting. An enormous pile of things to do, looming on the horizon.

I'm really bad at waiting.

And this is what our house looks like now. Almost June. Waiting.

This Moment

My weekly post. A moment from our week I'd like to share and remember. Have a great weekend!

The House

If I had known that the process of buying a house required inhuman amounts of patience mixed with a lot of stiff-upper-lipped-ness and a little fake ambivalence, I wouldn't have done this. I am not cut out for this sort of large scale purchase, as it turns out.

This little blue house has been in the works for us since the first week of March, and I have cried much more than necessary.  It really didn't seem like it was going to work out; our timing was all off. Tax returns, late pay checks, bills... the stars were not aligned in our favor.

But then it all did just work out. Isn't it funny how that usually happens? Apparently, we fooled someone. Because we got it. We should be closing very, very soon. (These three words have been used a lot around here in the last 12 weeks).

We will go from 2 bedrooms and a (sewing) nook to four bedrooms. From one bathroom to three. Our backyard will be smaller. Our front yard will be bigger. There is a chicken coop attached to the garage, and oh so many more details I won't list here.

So here's to new adventures, to a house for my girls.

This Moment

My weekly post. A moment from our week we'd like to share and remember. Have a great weekend!

Helen - the original blogger

Grandma E is the gal sitting on the swing.

My grandmother, Helen Ellis, was a home-ec teacher; she knew how to do a lot of home-ec things really well. She made a lot of casseroles heavy with celery and béchamel. She used a lot of wax paper in her kitchen, kept a tidy little home, wore galoshes. She and my grandfather Harry tended a meticulous backyard garden, canned tomatoes and beets, maintained a compost pile.

She was an obsessive organizer, everything labeled and in its place. She crocheted, she sewed. She took hundreds of family photos which were later, of course, organized into a very orderly photo album library. For fun she would cross stitch. Play rummy cube. Put together those puzzles with no less than 5000 pieces. 

I loved her dearly, but as a child I definitely did not find her to be fun or silly, not in the way that Harry was. I appreciated her but did not relate to her.

Now, 36, I not only find that I relate to her, but that I have become her. Wife. Mother of three girls. Crafter and cataloger of all things domestic. And I dwell sweetly on my memories of her - my mother's mother. Who could have guessed we would have so much in common?

I have inherited her love of making things. It's not simply a desire to acquire new skills, add new hobbies to the list, but a real intense attraction to the process of making something by hand. The satisfaction you draw from that, employing your skill, your time, your bits of creativity. I can only imagine she felt the same attraction.

I have inherited her desire to label. If Chris would let me, I would arrange and label every linen closet, basement shelf, and pantry cupboard. If real life allowed, everything in my home would have a place where it belonged, and those belongings would be sparse and never out of order.

I have inherited her love of documentation. As a kid we spent a lot of time rolling our eyes at the constant clicking of Helen's camera; the cutesy little captions she would put in her photo albums; the stories she would write about us. But now it occurs to me: Helen was the original blogger in our family.

Ruth, Hazel, Helen

As I flip through the pages of the little story she wrote - "Life with Katie", a small accounting of a week I spent at her house when I was 2 - as I look through her photos, fold up the afghan she crocheted me for my high school graduation, process another batch of canned tomatoes, gel another batch of jam... I find myself feeling awfully sentimental. I find myself getting carried away with thoughts of motherhood, homemaking, family, mortality.

We certainly don't need Mother's Day to appreciate the role that mothers play in our families. Whether they are ours or not. We certainly don't need an invitation to look back and appreciate with humor and a little irony the paths our lives take, the people who influence those paths, and, ultimately, the women (and men) we become.

So here's to you, Helen. The original blogger. The cataloger of all things domestic. Crafter extraordinaire. I love you. I miss you. And I'm so glad I knew you.

 mom, Aunt Joan, Aunt Nancy - looks like Gil and gma lou have a lot in common too. chubb-a chubb-a.

Working from home

I somehow managed a sweet deal with my maternity leave this time around. A lot of it has to do with having a real live job, one with benefits and the such. And part of it has to do with timing.

When Bela was born I was a PhD student taking a leave of absence from my studies, working at a garden center. Ouch. I became the manager of the store and had about 5 weeks off with little B before heading back to the 9-5 grind.

With Mae, I was back to teaching and on summer break. Not enough sick pay accumulated to take a real leave, I spent two lovely summer months with her before heading back.

But Gillian? I had her at the end of the Fall semester, had all of winter break off, and started my official 12-week leave at the beginning of Spring semester (the benefits). In my line of work, however, I don't tend to teach in the summers, thereby extending my leave until the start of Fall semester 2012. August. 8 months off (the timing).

Glorious. Right? Except for one little detail. My leave was 12 weeks, the semester was 17. I had to do something about the 5 week difference.

Enter Working From Home.

Every time I would describe my extended, paid maternity leave to friends, I would do so with gusto and joy and a little incredulity. I would go on and on about how long I had with my new babe, paid, like a real maternity leave should be. And then I would say the only thing I have to do is work from home a bit, AND THAT'S ALL!

Naive.

Working from home is hard. 

What do you do with a baby who takes only 1 hour naps now if you're lucky? Who can't entertain herself for very long? Who ends up in your lap while you're typing? With one hand? In Spanish?

A lot of the time I end up sitting with my laptop on the floor. Spanish papers spread out in front of me. One hand on a toy that I dangle in front of her, or one finger in her mouth so she can suck on it for fun. The other hand typing, cutting, pasting, planning. My mind a complete jumbled mess.

Working at night doesn't prove to be any easier. I'm exhausted. Must sleep. Can't think.

How do people do it? Work from home with immobile infants? Spill the beans, please.

I'm nearly done with my work assignment. Unfortunately I hear Gillian crying - up from her morning nap. Looks like I just wasted the last 30 minutes on this blog. Sigh.

One thing working from home with Gillian does produce? A surplus of Mommy/baby photos taken by webcam. Seeing her own face on the screen always makes her happy.

If only I could find a way to turn in a series of Katie/Gillian photos and some poorly written blogs to my employer in exchange for those five extra weeks, then we'd be doing pretty ok.

The blog

So, I was tinkering around with things the other day and I completely deleted my blog template.  This is the new temporary look while I do some re-designing.

This Moment

My weekly post - a moment from our week I'd like to share and remember. Have a great weekend!

Dating

I decided it was high time I started dating again. After months of locking myself away in my tower, I sallied forth from my humble abode on three separate dates.

The first two were with a handsome artist type I was fortunate enough to have married 7 years ago. On our first date, we went to Au Cheval. We had to wait 45 minutes squished into a small corner near the bar, sipping our $12 Old Fashioneds. I only got through about $4 worth of mine and had to give it to Chris. I am a liquor drinker only in my imagination. The food, though, I consumed every penny's worth. Nothing like fancy bar food to turn this girl on: plenty of fries with eggs and cheese, matzo ball soup, chicken salad. We had a great time.

For our second date we completely left our comfort zone (bar food), and went to Vermillion to enjoy their latin-indian fusion fare. It was oh so delicious, but way too fancy for us. We felt like clumsy little kids playing grown-up. After dinner we enjoyed adult company at a fundraiser/auction held for the benefit of our girls' school. We didn't have a single extra penny to bid on anything (because we pay to send our girls to that school, hee hee) , but we drank free wine and ate free cake and watched everyone bid on really awesome stuff.

 Chris and I were having a grand old time, reconnecting after the birth of our third child and months and months of his working 12 hour days, day after day.  While we talked about how insanely difficult it was to carve out time together, we also began to realize that - even though we feel the constant presence of our children, wherever we go, no matter what the time of day - we don't get enough one on one time with Bela and Mae.

Some new dates were added to the calendar.

Two weekends ago Bela and I went on a date to Morton Arboretum in Lisle, IL. It was their Arbor Day Celebration weekend, and the place was teeming with visitors. We spent a good deal of the afternoon in the Children's Garden, where Bela spent most of her time "saving" tadpoles in the Toad Nursery from the other, less gentle children. But we also rode bikes, practiced cartwheels, and got a little turned around in their hedge maze.

a baby tadpole - hard to see

Last weekend, Bela and Chris went on a road trip - a 7 hour journey from Chicago to Charm, Ohio to attend the open house for the farm camp Bela will be attending this summer. They ate road food, stayed in a hotel, held lambs at the farm, walked in the mud, and went fishing.

Mae is next. 

It's so easy to forget that even though you see your children and spouse every day, sometimes you need to work really hard to carve out special time for just them. And it's always such a relief to realize that you still really really like your family, even if they drive you crazy the other 6 days of the week.

So thanks for the dates, guys. Looking forward to more.

Mae was super sick Saturday when Chris and Bela left, but Sunday she rallied and made me a pot of chili! Love that girl

This Moment

My Friday post, a moment from our week I'd like to remember. Have a great weekend, folks.