White Christmas: The After Party or How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

The snow arrived fashionably late: too late for Christmas, but early enough to be enjoyed by the occupants of our house, young and old. As Christmas wound down, we spent our days enjoying the pieces that remained:

Taking in a little white magic;

Trying out Christmas gifts (the little personal pizza pans were a gift from the grandparents and are made by Doughmakers);

Making tracks (Yes, she has on two hoods, two hats, two pairs of pants, two shirts, a snowsuit, a heavy coat, and two pairs of her gloves covered by a pair of mine. Excessive is a word that comes to mind);

And testing Dad's strength (Who needs hills with a Dad like that? Have I mentioned I love this man?).

So with a little pizza in our bellies, a few snow puddles on our floors, and a lot of Christmas magic in our hearts, we're ready to move forward into a new year full of adventure. Here's to the magic that was and the memories that will be. Happy New Year!

How We're Doing

Audrey spent the days prior to Nathan's birth safely tucked away at my parents' house, so we (thinking he'd come a few days early like his sister) would be able to head the opposite direction to the hospital at a moment's notice. Nathan is clearly not his sister. He has his own clock, and a few days early was not on his agenda. So Audrey waited (wondering why we hadn't come to pick her up yet), we waited, and Nathan waited, until we found ourselves at the doctor's office on his due date performing a stress test to make sure everything was coming along just fine.

As we sat for the stress test (during which I had 5-6 contractions, of which I felt one), we found out about the holiday birthing schedule (if delivering on the 22nd or 23rd, proceed to Hospital A to be delivered by Doctor C; if the 24th or 26th, proceed to Hospital B to be delivered by Doctor D; and if we hit lucky 25, the hospital and doctor would change depending on the time of day). Meanwhile, Audrey was busy putting a pair of pajamas on a doll. The doll properly dressed for a nap, she informed my mother, "Her belly hurts. That baby has been in there too long." Apparently, we were all on the same page. Wishing to avoid a holiday game of musical doctors/hospitals, and taking into account that mild contractions had already started, we decided to book a room at the hospital and have a baby.

The plan was to break my water at the hospital and induce using pitocin. I'll let you in on a little secret. I'm a bit of a chicken. I could put a brave face on it and tell you that the thought of chemically inducing a baby gives me pause. What it actually does is make me tear up in the car and wish I were the type of person who thinks to carry Kleenex. Epidurals scare me even more. Aside from my trust issues involving complete strangers, enormous needles, and their proximity to my spine, I have a sensitivity to anesthesia. And while an epidural and anesthesia are not the same thing, I have a funny feeling that the two of us might not mix.

My feelings must have leaked out through my face. My doctor broke my water at seven, but said she'd wait a couple hours to see how I progressed before starting pitocin. Nathan did the rest. Apparently, once he decides to make an appearance, the boy makes an appearance. So in just over three hours, before pitocin or an epidural could be administered, before my doctor could get back to the hospital to deliver him, and almost before the nurse could say, "You have to get your wife back to the bed," he was here. I love this boy.

And now we're home, recovering nicely (which seems to happen pretty quickly with such a short labor). As for Audrey, aside from some initial disagreements concerning his name - apparently, she informed the guests at a Christmas party that we were naming him Wilbur and later carried on a fairly heated argument (on her side) about it with her aunt - she's handling the big sister role with gusto. Every once in a while we have to stop her from trying to do too much - from squeezing too tight. But the excess of love she has for him, well, it's what you hope for any sibling. The top picture may say it best. I turned from hanging up my coat to find him branded a "special person." Yes, I think we're going to do just fine.

~As for Wilbur, we finally convinced Audrey to call her brother Nathan (or "Naphin," as she pronounces it) after telling her she could name a doll she received for Christmas Wilbur. As for what she called the second doll she received? Charlotte, of course.

He's Here!

Introducing:

Nathan Tyler

6 lbs. 7oz; 21 inches long

Born at 10:12 pm (or 22:12 military time)

on December 22, 2009

We've had quite the blessed Christmas week, and there is much to tell. But I've been a bit distracted between Christmas gatherings, the generosity of family and friends, hugging Audrey who looks and acts as if she skipped an age in the week I've been without her, and learning everything I can about this new little man and sudden constant at my side. And, while I've been attempting to write this post since we arrived home from the hospital on Christmas Eve, the moments keep shifting focus to something else. It's the season. It's the three-year-old who makes Christmas mean something entirely new as an adult. It's the adoption of yet another role. Mostly, it's the new set of ten perfect fingers and toes that I can't stop admiring.

So I will quickly write this:

I hope that each of you has felt as blessed this Christmas as we have. I hope that each of you has felt the swell of love that a family generous with their time, their talents, and their gifts bring. I hope you spent time with those old and dear to your life and also time with someone new to remind you that the heart always makes room for more. I hope Christmas brought you everything it is meant to.

And now if you'll excuse me, I have ten perfect toes and ten perfect fingers to go admire. Times two. I'll be back in a couple days.

A Little Curb Appeal

For those of you on baby-watch, no I did not take my hot glue gun to the hospital. I have my multi-tasking limits and a rather practical husband who would, at the very least, raise an eyebrow to such behaviors (I did, however, take this picture while talking on the phone, which might explain a little about its, ahem, quality). Realizing that we would not be spending our day at the hospital, I decided it was time to get a holiday wreath on our door.

Sometime last year I picked up a grapevine wreath for around $3. I kept thinking I would get around to making something to dress up our doorway. I didn't. Instead, I found odd-shaped (made just for hanging on doors, etc) galvanized buckets with handles, filled them with objects (evergreen sprigs, fake berries) and hung them from our rather weathered wreath hook.

In November, Audrey went on a little pine cone (or snow cone, as she called them) hunt at my parent's house. Remember this? This was the first year my parents' evergreens produced pine cones and Audrey amassed quite the collection. Some of them found their way home with us, and my mind drifted back to the bare grapevine wreath.

Fast forward and month and a half. Armed with a glue gun and a pocket of time, today I dug out the grapevine wreath and Audrey's pile of pine cones. I had thought gluing pine cones to a wreath would be a simple, fast project. I was wrong. Pine cones don't like to stick easily to the inconsistent surface of twisted grapevines. I improvised. I grabbed some dark brown felt. I glued the felt to the back of the pine cones. Then, I glued the other side of the felt to the wreath. It was still tricky getting multiple points on each pine cone to stick to the wreath, but this method worked much better. (Tip: cut out all of your felt pieces before touching your pine cones to prevent sap-covered sewing scissors).

Of course, I ran out of glue three pine cones short of finishing and had to run to the store. Glue retrieved, I tied a piece of ribbon (I believe this ribbon was one I had saved from the top of gift I received at my baby shower for Audrey. Like the wreath, it was sitting around waiting for the perfect project) in the bare space on the wreath before filling in the last three pine cones. Pine cones secure (or what we're going to call secure and hope for the best) I dug out some of the fake berries from my "throw some berries and greenery into a bucket and call it a door hanging" adventures and separated them into small sprigs. I tucked the springs between any holes where pine cones refused to snuggle up as close to their neighbors as I wished they had. I didn't glue these into place just in case I decide to attempt to use this as a multiple occasion wreath. I might take the sprigs out and swap in some dried red leaves for fall, etc. In the meantime, for the price of a handful of glue sticks (about a dollar) and a $3 wreath that has been sitting around bidding its time, we've added a little holiday cheer to our door. Not too shabby.

For Posterity's Sake: Week in Review 50

This has been a teeter-totter week: high energy one moment/low energy the next (me, not Audrey - her high energy only runs out if she's sick); thinking the baby could come any moment/thinking the baby may never come; feeling as if everything is ready/remembering things I've yet to do; excitement at the events to come/worry for everything to go smoothly. Being in the midst of a teeter-totter week brings an appreciation for those 3-year-old moments of kindness and humor like no other time. So without further ado, here are the moments that have kept me laughing and loving this week as I wait for this ride to come to a steady stop.

Sunday, Jason sent me upstairs for a much-needed nap. I'm not sure what transpired while I was resting, or the conversations that took place. But when I came downstairs they were both seated, quiet, at the kitchen table. "I've been moved to the bad list," Audrey said, as a slightly stunned Daddy shrugged his shoulders.


Later that night, as Jason put her to bed, she told him, "My nose won't be quiet." He had her blow her nose to help quiet it down. Then, as he prepared to leave her room, she said, "Blow your nose in your room, okay?"


I apologize in advance for any visuals this next story may give you, because frankly, neither of us want that. But as a mama who has spent several afternoons chasing a diaperless (slow to potty-train) toddler through the house while warning, "don't pee in the house! You cannot pee on the floor if you're not going to wear a diaper!" This made me laugh too much not to record.

Monday, Audrey tagged along with me to my doctor's appointment. It was just a routine check-up for someone this far along in pregnancy. The nurse checked my vitals, handed me a paper sheet and told me to undress from the waist down. I followed her directions, and sat down on the exam table, covered by the sheet. Audrey watched from a seat in the corner. "Don't pee!" she said.


Jason put Audrey to bed that night. "I'll see you in the morning," she told him (something I always say to her when I put her to bed).
"Well, I might be at work when you get up," he said.
"Don't go bye-bye, okay?" she said. Poor Daddy who has to go to work.


On Tuesday, while running an errand, Audrey began examining my wedding ring from the cart. She asked what it was. I told her it was the ring her father gave me when we got married.
"I want one," she said.
"You can have one when you get married," I told her.
She tugged at my ring, trying to pull it up my finger.
"I don't want to get married today. I just want one of these."


Some comments and ideas are reoccurring this week. Twas the Night Before Christmas has been a favorite bedtime story as of late. Each time I read the phrase about Santa's beard, Audrey corrects me, "That's not a beard. It's a gotee."

And, as always, she is constantly telling us just who she is. "This princess loves you," she informed me one day. "This is Daddy's little pancake!" she said, announcing herself as she jumped into the closet where I was picking out clothes.


I can only imagine how her perceptions of herself will change in the coming weeks after her brother makes his appearance and we adjust to life with another "plus one". But for now, as her father and I balance between worry and excitement over the events and changes to come, she is the steady, running through the hallway playing hide-n-seek with her dad, the sound of knees hitting hardwood as she takes the corner too fast - a total wipe out.

"Are you okay?" I yell.
"Yes. I like doing that, Mom."

She reappears a few minutes later and tackles Jason on the family room floor before bending her arm to flex her muscle. Jason laughs. "Did you teach her that?" he asks.
"No," I say, and then to Audrey, "Where did you learn that?"
"At school."

Yes, these next few weeks, there's no telling what they hold.

Salt Dough Ornaments

We haven't totally forgotten about Christmas around here. Even with an organization-crazed mama anxious to see what lies ahead in the coming weekend and week for our little family, the Christmas spirit is still very much alive. And growing. The last few days, Audrey and I have been working on a little project: Salt Dough Ornaments.





We followed this basic recipe, with minor changes. We didn't use food coloring, opting for painting ours after they dried and then covering them with glitter (as Audrey wished) while the paint was still wet.

This was a three day project for us. We made the dough the first evening. The recipe instructs that you roll out the dough, cut with cookie cutters, and move the shapes to a cookie sheet for baking. This dough is sticky and a bit hard to move. I placed parchment paper onto a cookie sheet and separated the dough into smaller sections. With the help of some flour, I rolled these smaller sections onto the parchment paper, Audrey cut out the shapes and we scraped the excess dough away, leaving the ornaments on the sheet where they lay. Using a straw, Audrey poked holes into the ornaments to create a space to add ribbon later. Then, they went into the oven on 250 degrees for a few hours, followed by a night of the ornaments being left out on the counter to dry.

The following day, Audrey painted the ornaments and added glitter. She was in a white Christmas mood, favoring white paint with a dusting (or downpouring, which ever you prefer) of red or white glitter - every once in a while throwing in a green ornament for good measure. The last five ornaments she decided to leave white, without "sprinkles" saying as she set each one down to dry for the evening, "that is so special."

This morning we shook the excess glitter free, I added ribbons, and Audrey placed the ornaments on the tree (before taking them off to rehang on her newly built Lego castle). I may just have to run out and buy a festive paint pen to write names across some of them to use in lieu of gift tags. Because, she's right, they are so special.

*I think this is an activity we could easily revisit each year, and one easily adapted to fit kids of all ages. Even the smallest kids love to get their hands into dough and pound with cookie cutters, whether their work amounts to an ornament or not. As a child's artistic talents grow, these can be made more complicated, using their favorite art supplies of the moment to decorate them. This recipe also makes quite a bit of dough. We ended up with a baker's dozen of ornaments, and still have a small tub of dough leftover in the fridge for those times this week we feel like getting our hands a bit dirty.

Mission Organization: The Ribbon Board

I am not what you would call inherently organized. This never bothered me until I got married. Jason was the neater of our duo, which sadly (as all neater spouses do), he noticed. I am a pile-maker. He is a declutterer. I felt as if my piles were off to the side. He felt as if he was always tripping over them. He handled this with little complaining and a lot of laughing at our differences of opinion concerning geography. I began to notice my own piles. Jason began to let it go. Somehow, we met in the middle and, for the most part, kept a pretty tidy house (with my piles neatly hidden). Then, we entered toddler parenthood.

Two things happened. 1) We realized that we had been married for 8 years. Our belongings, which were once easily transported in a tiny Uhaul pulled by a 2-door Saturn had reproduced at the rate of fruit flies, now requiring moving vans (plural). 2) Audrey entered toddlerhood, a stage where a child's items seem to multiply at the rate of aphrodisiac-induced fruit flies AND she stopped napping, which put an end to my mid-day decluttering rituals. 3) Okay, I suppose there is a third force at work here. I tend to choose craft projects, trips to the zoo, gardening, going to the gym (insert any other activity you wish) over cleaning or organizing. Any day. Hence, the current state of our kitchen (or any other room in our house you care to substitute here).

The picture above was taken this afternoon, but could be any day with other objects of clutter standing in. Audrey's discarded school items; a grocery bag filled with baby hand-me-downs from a generous neighbor; a hat that never made it to the closet; a folder of mail and magazines I'm pretending I'll get to later; a bag from yesterday's gym excursion; a bag of knitting; I'm sure there are some bills tucked under that pile somewhere. The counter you see belongs to the kitchen desk, something the builder threw into the blueprints to add, ahem, functionality to the homeowners' lives. I've yet to make it function. But I will not be deterred.

One thing that the impending birth of a child brings about in me is the need to create systems (I have no medical proof, but would argue that there is an organizational hormone that kicks in during the last trimester, particularly month 9). I can only stare at the kitchen counters for so long before I must get out and do something about them. Yesterday, armed with coupons, I ran to the fabric store in search of cork board, ribbon, linen, and upholstery tacks to make a ribbon board like the ones in Martha Stewart's Good Things for Organizing.

I think I check Stewart's book out from the library every other month. I keep flipping through the pages, stashing away ideas for all rooms of the house, and daydreaming about a day when I can tell you exactly where to find our staple gun (all the while taking comfort in the fact that Stewart, herself, gives a nod to her housekeepers and assistants in her introduction saying that if she can't find an item, she "can be certain they can" - followed by the thought, well, if Martha Stewart can't keep track of her stuff with all of these organizational systems and help, then what iota of a shot does a pregnancy-mush-brained chaser of a toddler have? But I didn't dwell on these thoughts for long, having a project at hand). An assistant or housekeeper not in my budget, I opted for starting with the ribbon board.

Stewart uses Homasote board for her ribbon boards, which sounds like a fantastic product (and is apparently available at Menards), but I needed fabric for this project as well as some others I'm hoping to get to, and well, Menards doesn't have that. So I substituted a magnetic cork board that I found on sale at Joanns. Stewart suggests covering the board with linen, a fabric that I substituted with a linen/cotton mix when I found almost a yard-length remnant in a 50%-off bin. A couple $1 spools of different sizes of black ribbon and a pack of small black upholstery tacks and I was set.

The steps were pretty simple. Wrap the fabric around the board and use a staple gun (once I scoured the house to find it) to secure it to the back side (see the third photo). I serged the edges of my fabric beforehand, just to keep it from fraying. (You may notice some extra seams on the back of board, that's because I misjudged how much fabric I needed, and rather than waste the piece I had already cut, I just added a bit more fabric to each side). Next, add the ribbon in any decorative pattern that you wish, using the upholstery tacks to secure it. My lines are not perfect, since I freehanded the design rather than using a measuring tape. I'm sure that's not the Martha Stewart way (I'm also sure she's never had to add fabric to the edges of her project because she cut the fabric too short). But, I figure, if someone is spending their time in my kitchen contemplating the straightness of my ribbon board lines, well, the conversation or the food has gone horribly wrong. Last, hardware is supposed to be added to hang the board to the wall. My board came with hardware built in, so rather than follow the book, I sewed a couple of buttonholes into the fabric that line up with the existing hardware holes (see the picture above). When it comes time to hang it, I will cut the buttonholes open and fit the screws through them (I have no idea if this will work or not).

And, voila, a new ribbon board to help me make our kitchen desk a bit more functional. I haven't hung my board yet. I have enough space to make another (and enough ribbon, tacks, and fabric left as well) and hang them side-by-side. So another board or dry erase board, calendar, or other such item may be in our near future. Until then, things are looking a little clearer. Now if only I could make that mail/magazine folder disappear.