valentines past

i'm putting a hold on my attempts to get decent shots of the girls' journals until i can get myself home during the forty minute slot when it isn't dismally dark in our place.. winter..

instead, here's a little reminder of what we did to festivate (that's right) valentine's day last year:

felt headbands and felt bracelets for friends.

looks like i've got some headbands to find and some figuring to do. we're a last minute kind of crew around here, so even though we don't have anything in the works right now, i imagine by the time we run out the door friday morning we'll have something fun to give to the people we love, or just like okay.. a big snowstorm is supposed to come in tonight, and i'm already planning on having everyone home tomorrow to drink hot chocolate and hatch a scheme for our valentine's day fun. or at the very least, we'll draw some hearts, tape them to a bag stack of starbursts and call it true love.

little girls' journals

for the past nine months the girls have (more or less) been keeping a journal and it has been awesome. long before i ever had children i planned how i would have "journal sundays" every sunday, i've even got it written down in a journal of my own somewhere.. we would come home from church and, after a healthy snack, we'd all sit down to reflect on our week and write in our journals. i would gently encourage the kids and we'd all smile.. that vision makes me laugh. the reality is much less serene but (mostly) much more fun. healthy sunday snacks have been replaced by desperate fistfuls of tortilla chips and doughnuts (it's true.. the deperate post-church hunger is satisfied by whatever chip sees first when he opens the cupboards), the journal writing is completely sporadic and sometimes totally enforced on reluctant little girls, but the records eve and ruth have of their own lives so far are pretty perfect in their sweetness, their craziness, and their awesome truthfulness.

eve. may 4, 2009. "no i don't like diurreah. i liked waching angelena ballrena"

ruth: april 21, 2009
mom: what did you want to say about your day?
ruth: i didn't want to say about my day
m: what is this picture?
r: jungle
m: what else?
r: i don't want to tell you.

eve: may 10, thursday. "i loved the little mermaid at times square."

ruth: may 10, 2009 "this is ariel and flounder. i goed to the little mermaid at the play. it was in Times Square. my favorite part was when ariel got the pink dress and when she got married. my daddy was named chip and i watched a play with dad. i wish i could see ariel again because i wish i could see the married part again."

to make "keeping a journal" something approachable i gave the girls a very simple formula to start with: draw or write about their favorite part of the day/week along with their least favorite. eve was totally in from the moment i introduced the idea and has stuck to the formula with few exceptions. ruth, on the other hand, heard the plan, made a bizarre face, rolled over and began complaining about not knowing any real princesses.. she has mostly stuck to her own formula of journal keeping, which at the beginning involved her drawing about whatever she wanted to while i pestered her to tell me about it. but now that she is starting to not only draw but write on her own (and realizing just how long it takes to make all those words) the formula is coming in handy, even for ruthie who likes to do everyhting her own way.

(two page spread) eve: june 3, 2009 "no i do l" [beginnings of "no i don't like"] june 4, 2009 "i poukt [puked] on charlies birthday. today i lovee ma-king the teve purojec [tv project]."

ruth: june 2, 2009

ruth: 10.9.09, "keira, tessa, eden, monet, malena, ruth, ms. jin. we're all starting a show on the stage."

eve: october 9, 2009. "i like gayb"

ruth: january 15, 2010. "planetarium. i did not like when it exploded i liked the gas of the sun."

there is so much i love about ruth's and eve's magical journals. i love that they don't think too much about what they record, they just do it. i love that they want me to look at everything they draw and write, because i know that won't last. and i love having this record of their drawing and writing progression. but most of all i love that it is their own marks that fill each page. it is all their own words, their own takes on their own lives, not my interpretation or perspective, but theirs. just as journals should be.

 

next up: the making of the journals.

granola for the new year

i welcomed the new year by getting my wisdom teeth removed. almost as awesome as it sounds. but now that the swelling is gone and the stitches are out i'm ready to calmly greet the year ahead of me. the closets are mostly reorganized, the donations dropped off and, most of all, we're doing our best to keep things simple. and that includes the food i'm making and my family is eating.

truth be told, i don't love cooking. if i had the resources i'd hire an alice in two seconds to take over all cooking and housekeeping. but, no alice will be joining us in our 650 square feet anytime soon, so i have to do what i can. and for me, it all starts with loved, simple recipes that i don't mind making and that stick around for a litte while. like granola. in fact, granola is a staple in our house. and i really don't think there is a more deliciously simple granola than that made from the recipe i inherited when i married chip. beautifully basic, not too sweet, just barely salty, and no seeds (i'm not a seed fan). i've been making it regulalrly for the past 9+ years and imagine that, like my mother-in-law, i will continue to fill our home with it's warm honeyed smell for the next 20. i've made huge batches for campouts and i've given it to friends at christmas, but mostly we just love to have it on hand at home for those cozy winter days. and every other day of the year too, really.

Granola

10 c old fashined rolled oats
2c whole wheat flour
2c wheat germ
2c coconut
1.5- 2c chopped pecans and sliced almonds
         mix above ingredients in large bowl

4T vanilla
1/2c water
2c honey
1c (or less) oil
         mix wet ingredients in separate bowl, add to try ingredients
         and combine well. spread in shallow pans. stir gently every
         15 minutes or so while baking. bake at 250 until deep golden
         and almost dry, approximatley 2 hours. remove, let cool.
         store tightly covered. in the refrigerator if you have room (i don't).

put milk over it and eat as cereal, top it with yogurt and fruit, eat it plain, add raisins or whatever to it. however you eat it, enjoy. enjoy the simplicity of the granola and the year ahead. or just throw it all over the kitchen like charlie does. that seems to bring a lot of joy too.

here the boy is, because you haven't seen him in awhile. he's awesome. even if he does draw all over the couch with sharpie and throw his thomas train in my face to wake me up in the morning.

caroling

christmas music by the muppets is on heavy, heavy rotation in our home as we gear up for the big day. ruth's favorite? "the christmas queen" with miss piggie. royalty is mentioned- and ruth loves royalty- but miss piggie also says the forbidden "shut up" and ruthie, who loves being naughty, gets giddy each time she hears it (and then whispers it to herself about five times to see how it tastes). topping eve's charts (literally. charts. lists. visual aides of any kind. she's all about them):  "zat you, santa claus?"  by dr. teeth and the electric mayhem band. perfect for swaying hips through the house while snapping- her latest achievement.

as awesome as the muppets are, chip and i sourced the more traditional carols for our christmas decorating. a far cry from the simplicity and ease of last year, but we're now almost certain we love it just as much. and eve can sound out "wondrous" so, win win. chip, once again, deserves the high five with this decorating scheme. he concocted the plan, brought home the paper and didn't complain once when i stopped cutting after three lines.

..

four more days. amazing. and to start our celebratory week off in the most perfect way, a big snow storm came through town last night. with church cancelled we spent the day with friends, watching the girls make snow angels in the freezing wind, visiting the life of christ exhibit at the brooklyn museum, returning home to drink deliciously rich hot chocolate, listen to heavenly angels (and muppets) sing our favorite songs of the season while the snow melted off our boots. a pretty decent start to what will undoubtedly be one of the greatest and jouyfully busiest weeks of the year. merry christmas everyone!

..

-added- how we do it: cut out letters- freehand in all different sizes make it especially charming, i think. get long strands of bakers twine (any thin string will do, i just have an absurd amount of bakers twine). using scotch tape, tape the letters to the string, folding each piece of tape from the front of letter, over the string and to the back of the letter. secure string of words to walls. done.

tea time

i woke up from the haze of adjusting back to new york time to find myself in the wednesday before thanksgiving. feasts, decorations, turkey dances at school, frenzied but fun food preparation at home filled the day. then thursday came. more preparation, a subway ride to the west side to catch the last 20 minutes of the parade (perfect- when we first arrived there was a marching band completely obscured by the 1/2-block-deep crowd ahead of us, no giant balloons in sight.. but there were plenty of street vendors selling very average sized balloons all around us. ruthie, on my shoulders; "ooooh! there sure are a lot of balloons! look at that princess balloon! oh i love these balloon parades, mom, i love it!" then the pilsbury doughboy poked his head around the dakota and blew her mind. then, just minutes later, to a wildly cheering crowd santa-- the REAL santa-- showed himself. eve; "the REAL santa came to visit us just to make us thankful?! he came early? so totally awesome."), return home, grab the food, grab the kids and, cleverly avoiding most traffic, arrive in the suburbs to spend a dreamy day in a house full of friends and insanely delicious food. i love thanksgiving.

the few next days brought sleepovers with family, our third round of fairly severe colds for the season, december, and me sitting and sniffling and behind on everything. but through the haze of jetlag and head cold i am so very happy to be home and so very happy to give my thailand report as soon as i can gather myself and my photos. 

until that magical day, i'll share some photos that the talented photographer, kelsey foster, took of the girls back in october. the moment kelsey contacted me about possibly setting up a shoot with the girls in some of the clothes i've designed for them, i was giddy. her photos are lovely and she is just the right amount of sweet and easy going. watching her patience with the girls - who were ridiculous that morning - was entertaining and endearing. also, the fact that i'm pretty sure she saved charlie from getting trampled by waiters at least three times makes me especially fond of her. 

kelsey chose the roebling tea room for the shoot. a great choice. the food was fresh (which made charlie happy), the light was beautiful (which made the girls happy- sunshine!) and the place was virtually empty until the moment we began to make our way out (which made me happy. especially in the moment when charlie was yelling and writhing in my arms, ruth was writhing on the floor because i took a drink of her juice and eve was running along the bench at full speed). 

kelsey, thank you again! meeting you was wonderful and the pictures are beautiful and so fun. 

all images property of kelsey foster. all clothing designs property of katie did.

bangkok

i almost called it off a hundred times. but i didn't. friday i hugged and kissed the kids goodbye, hopped on a plane and, 23 hours later, stepped into suvarnabhumi airport, bangkok, thailand. chip is here for a commercial shoot at the end of this week and i'm here because i needed a stamp in my passport. we've ridden on boats, subway, sky train, tuk tuks, motocycle taxis and elephants. we've eaten from the vendors and shopped the markets. we've inhaled the pollution and scents of unfamiliar spices. we've wandered a bit, gotten lost some and we have smiled a lot and been smiled at a lot.

tomorrow we head for the central plains, toward the end of the week i may take a solo day trip to an island just south and the weekend may take me up north. i love the flexibility of our days and the fact that we're still adjusting to the time, so that by 9am we've done a day's worth of adventuring.

i miss the kids. especially when i see entire families packed onto a scooter- toddlers squished between parents and bigger kids. but they are all in great hands.. and flying by myself was amazing. a good amount of sleeping and an embarassing amount of movies, none of which would have entertained the girls.

the ghosts of '09

just moments after pulling off their bat costumes last year, the girls decided that for the next halloween they wanted to be ghosts.. or witches.. or mermaids. when october rolled around there were several rounds of deliberation, but they finally, officially, decided on being ghosts. because in addition to being the one and only day of the year that the girls like the color black, it is also the one day they like to be "just a liiiittle tiny bit scary." i love their choices- so traditional, so simple, and so reminiscent of my own childhood. 

old sheets were pulled from the give-away pile, the edges cut and ripped, a hood made from excess sheeting was attached and a slit cut for the head to pop through. layer the hooded sheet over white shoes, white tights, white leotard, some sticky paint on their faces and we were ready to go. charlie's ghost costume was even simpler, taking no more than three minutes to put together. white leggings, white hooded sweatshirt, black circles around the eyes and a squarish piece of fabric with a hole cut out to put over his head.

watching the girls float among the brownstones, shouting a giddy "boo" at many fellow trick-or-treaters, and smiling in wonder as their buckets filled was wonderful. and watching charlie walk the streets with them, in his little ghost costume, getting ready to play peek-a-boo each time the girls tried to surprise with their shouts was insanely adorable. barely taller than people's knees, the little ghost smiled and laughed as he toddled alongside the adults and big kids. candy in hand and a dribble of chocolate running down his chin, he was so happy and so awesome.

after a few exciting blocks we made our way home, past the plaza, past the library, through the few drops of rain and into our little apartment where we washed faces, chose two (more) candies to eat, cozied together to watch a show and called it a good halloween night. 

the girls have been having some discussions about next year's costumes. a witch is the top of eve's list, but ruth is pulling hard for gingerbread (not a gingerbread man, or girl, just gingerbread..). they've got a year to hash it out. either way, i think we're starting in a good place.

++photos will (hopefully) be added/changed later today. after downloading all our pictures halloween night. i checked them, looked through them with the girls and went to sleep. next day i went to the computer and, poof! most of the pictures were gone forever. only a few remain that i downloaded. and, of course, since it seemed the download was successful, i wiped my memory card clean. bummer. here's hoping image recovery from the memory card works!

happy halloween

after a full school day of parading and partying on friday, our little ghosts are ready for another round. very very soon we will hit the streets of brooklyn, pumpkin buckets in hand, to load up on an obscene amount of candy that will be divvied up over the next six months.. or just tossed when no one's looking. the girls have been practicing their trick-or-treating approach and they've got it down. eve, taking her costume seriously, has very specific plans of how to startle and scare and surprise as many of the good people of brooklyn as she possibly can. a test round on a group of 5th graders hanging out on the street on our way home yesterday went very well. giggles trailed after her floating figure all the way to our building. ruth has no interest in scaring others, but she doesn't mind showing her ghost shoes. they may say "BOO" but when said in fancy gold metallic iron-on dots, well that's only going to make people happy, especially those little girls of the just days away from four-years-old variety. 

happy halloween!

++

dots from here. the service was so fast and, come on. iron-on metallic dots? too cool. any residual 10-year-old envy of my friend and her BeDazzler has been washed away. 

gymnast shoes from pearl river. a few reinforcing rounds through the sewing machine fixed eve's ripped seam and she was ready to go for a night on the town. also, be warned; they are slippers and and slippers aren't water proof. our ghosts had soggy feet at the end of the night. but throw enough candy at them and they don't even notice.

weekend

we cowered in the cold wind on the way home from school today. fall is here and winter is right around the corner. the coats will come out of storage this weekend and the shorts and sandals will be put back in their place. we will run outside for a bit and do some special preparations for upcoming programs and assignments. we will see where the wild things are. we will go to church and we will make soup (because soup makes the girls' hair golden.. a lie i told long ago to get them to eat up. a lie eve has never forgotten and a lie both she and ruth fully believe. i plan on a deathbed confession..). but mostly we will just be. at home, cozy on a blustery fall weekend. changing out our closets for the season, picking up toys, resting, snacking, looking and listening. 

+listening to this american life. honestly, does it get any better than this program? after years of listening, i just don't know how it could. the moth is pretty great too (if you live in new york, please go to a story slam at some point. really worth waiting in line for. some people have stories to share and share them very well. hey, wait! i went to link and found: chicago! detroit! you can go to story slams too! and LA, you've been able to for awhile!). 

+looking at this. have you seen this? after looking at the pictures watch the video linked under the article. beautiful and moving. people and the things they do are incredible. i want the royal de luxe to come to new york. i want to watch the big giant rise out of the east river and i want to, somehow, be one of those people grabbing the ropes to make that little giantess move. 

+listening to animal noises. anywhere we can find them. over and over and over and guessing who they belong to. the kids love it. charlie loves anything that sounds dangerous. and cows.  

+looking over and backing up our summer photos. this summer was lovely and i miss it. i normally don't say that about summer, but i'm saying it now. i miss the textures and colors and sounds of coastal oregon mornings, and i miss being the masters of our own schedules. but more i miss seeing little sandaled feet. even when, or maybe especially when, they're popping up during dinner. luckily, little feet in little boots kicking crunchy leaves on the way home from school are a pretty great replacement for now. 

here's to the weekend.

carefree

my 50mm lens broke. then one phone died while the other disappeared. two days later a water balloon burst all over (and killed) my one-month-old laptop. a water balloon. inside my home. i can really only blame myself, but still, there were a few days these past two weeks where i was pretty sure that life was against me. 

then the crisp fall wind came and blew in the anniversary of our wedding. nine years. (high-five, chip). last tuesday rolled around, chip surprise-took the day off work and pushed me out of the door to have a day of wandering all to myself. the city was wonderful and strange without my squad. i hardly knew what to do or how to interact with the city without kids.. or at the very least without the threat of an outrageous babysitting bill or looming pick-up time. but, i eventually figured it out. i wandered in soho and central park, i saw a movie at 5pm at the Paris (i was the youngest by 35 years, at least. maybe my favorite NY movie viewing experience to date.), i wandered down 5th avenue and grew even firmer in my deep love of brooklyn. chip and i met at balthazar for dinner, wandered to the east village for ice cream and another movie, then took a cab to the west village to stay the night at the jane*. all by ourselves. no kids calling our names in the night or "whispering" in our faces in the morning. it was a first ever and it was nice. and chip did it all. (big-time high-five, chip). the next morning i watched the hudson from our window and after leaving the hotel, chip took off to work while i slowly wandered home.

for a life that has seemed anything but carefree lately, it was the perfect gift. the break from everything, the time alone with chip and the happy reunion with the kids.. just right. 

and now we are back. back to schedules and volunteering and lunch-packing and scrambling to find the missing shoe and fundraising and playing and eating and meetings and eating (charlie is beastly hungry all the time lately) and trying our best to wrap it all up in pajamas, brushed teeth and a cup full of water before 8pm every night.. and i'm trying my best to approach all we have going on with the same happy attitude i approached my day of wandering. 

so it seemed right that when reuniting with my lonely sewing machine i turn to one of my favorite japanese craft books newly translated into english (hooray!); carefree clothes for girls. the japanese version made me want to dye the girls' hair red and move to the country, and the new english version does the same.. but since that doesn't make any sense (yet) i'm happy that it also makes me want to sew up a ton of these adorable clothes for eve and ruth's life in the city.

i skipped on the lovely handwork the book instructs for the apron (i get impatient for a final product when i haven't sewn in awhile.. but really, the detailed handwork in the book is insanely charming). and i went for strips of bias tape along the pant leg rather than the wide lace in the instructions- no lace on hand and i find stripes+cropped pant+little girl to be an irresistible combination (and who really has the power to resist the sailor trend, especially after just lodging in the "captain's quarters" at a hotel that was originally built to lodge sailors in port and was actually home to the survivors of the titanic while that sad mess was sorted out? not me). i love it. simple and darling and so easy to sew. eve's feelings about the outfit? she can put "special secret and even super secret messages and things in the gigantic pocket without anyone knowing" all while practicing moves for ballet class, so she's a fan. even ruth, while in her cave (laundry hamper turned on its side with blanket over it), rotating between her bat costume and skirted lime green swimsuit and shouting "pumpkin pie!" every thirty seconds gives it a very enthusiastic thumbs up. so, even with 80% of technology dead in our home, and charlie throwing everything he can find to the ground, it isn't so hard to feel carefree with images of life on the sea, super secret messages and pumpkin pie on the brain. 

* for those who follow the link to the jane, know that chip didn't surprise me with a tiny room with bunk beds (although that would have been ridiculous and hysterical.. and a revisit to our past- on a maiden scouting voyage to new york nearly 9 years ago we visited the jane when it was gritty and cheap and a friend was lodging in one of those tiny tiny rooms until he found an apartment).. we stayed in one of the captain's rooms which was cool and fun, but not without some mysterious weirdness..