christmas 2007 retrospective: the wrap up

the glory of the wrap-up report is that it is really simple. for the week in between christmas and new year's chip's office was closed, and for that one magical week we had no obligations. no meetings to attend or lessons to prepare or appointments to keep. we just got to hang out with each other and do as little as possible. we read books and built castles and watched planet earth. we walked to the park, the library, the playgrounds and we went out to eat. we went to the central park zoo with the upper east side riches and to the bronx zoo with the beans and we (i) did a little shopping, but really, the bulk of the break was all about being home and doing nothing.

as for new year's eve, it was another great night at the beans with a lot of friends and too much good food. alysha went overboard with a ton of chocolatey treats and i went a little overboard with my part: spinach dip in bread bowl, bruschetta, stuffed mushrooms and cream cheese/marshmallow fluff/almond extract dip with various fruit. the kids played, the adults talked. and we all said goodbye before the new year arrived. just as we were putting eve in her bed the countdown outside began. we joined in quietly in our little place and fell asleep listening to fireworks boom and our windows rattle.

welcome, 2008. i've got a few goals for you. but mostly i'm just hoping to be a better friend, a better mom, a better person in general.

christmas 2007 retrospective: the big day

after almost five hours of sleep i woke up surrounded by chip, eve and ruth. all in our double bed. after some half-hearted attempts, i gave up trying to go back to sleep. so instead i stared at chip, i stared at eve and i stared at ruth. i nudged and whispered but no one was budging. so with the darkness and silence of brooklyn outside, the glow of the tree in our little place, i got up, wandered a bit and started playing with the gift chip and i got for each other. an amazing camera is a fun thing to have when you're anxiously waiting for your family to wake up christmas morning.

about two and a half hours later the girls started rustling, which possibly had something to do with the countless pictures i was snapping inches from their faces, and ruthie was the first to get a cheery "merry christmas!" whisper and kiss from me, with eve and chip following shortly after. eve's daily question of "it's christmas time today?" was finally answered with a yes and when asked if we should go into the family room to see if santa came ruth gave a very strong, panicked "NO! no santa a my house." so we stopped mentioning his name and after about 10 minutes ruth was ready to leave the bedroom with eve close by her side.

last year we over did christmas. even with my handy rhyme and limited gifts, i think we did it this year too. the stockings, which are so fun to pack full of great little gifts, kept the girls busy and entertained for a long time. i think we could have stopped it all there. but, after a bowl of lucky charms and apple jacks for the girls and grapefruit for chip and i, we went to work opening the rest of the gifts. all the gifts from chip and i were wrapped in white paper and tied with fabric ribbons only. maybe a little obsessive, but i loved it.

the girls unwrapping their gifts was perfect. ruthie would immediately flip the gift over, find the seam and tear like crazy. eve, after having untied or cut the ribbon, would carefully unfold the edges and then proceed to unwrap or tear as gently as possible until the gift was revealed.

hits: the blocks, hello kitty camera (after it finally charged after a billion hours) the planet earth series, the saute (thank you s&e), and the magic wands. along with every gift from grandparents.

misses: the bicycle riding duck, from santa to ruthie. she's terrified of it. thanks a lot santa.

after playing with all the gifts for awhile i hurried to the kitchen, pulled the strata from the fridge, stuck it in the oven and got to work on preparing and baking the cranberry coffee cake. then off we walked to the beans. christmas with the beans is always so great. and fattening. alysha had baked like crazy, so altogether we had eight (more?) different treats/dishes to choose from. between five adults and three kids we ate almost all of it and then sat around talking, laughing, napping, playing and taking pictures.

after hours of lounging at the beans we made our way over to the nelsons and their homey brownstone. more chatting, eating and laughing. once the girls couldn't take it anymore we made our way home. as chip and i cleaned up they watched a show. ruth fell asleep almost instantly after lying down on the rug. eve was not far behind and neither were we. i fell asleep to the oddly soothing sound of jamaican style christmas music and chip's heavy breathing. merry christmas, brooklyn.

next up: the final installment so i can be free: christmas 2007 retrospective: the wrap up.

christmas 2007 retrospective: the build-up

i'm starting to feel bogged down by my report of christmas. like it's a history paper i should have turned in last week, this is quickly falling into the chore category. but, i want this christmas documented, so i've just got to do it. and quickly, if i can make myself sit down in front of my computer long enough to sift through all the pictures and write something, anything, that makes sense. here goes.

church program. i wish i had a recording of the choir. the music selected was much more traditional than the usual fare; old basque, german and french carols. so lovely and the tiniest bit complicated, adding to the interest. i sang a solo in "the angel gabriel from heaven came" and shockingly, managed to not sound like a goat. in fact i was really happy with my performance. and that's rare. the best part of this program was the timing. held on december 9th, i got thinking about what christmas really is early in the month, and there was plenty of time for the excitement to really build. the worst part was the complete break down the girls had during the entire thing. apparently they're no fans of me being up on the stand while chip sits with them in the pew (a complete reversal of the usual church experience). chip was able to hear about 1/16th of the whole thing. but honestly, it was really nice watching the freak outs and not having to deal with them myself.

decorations. chip is the christmas decoration master around here. this is his doing and to his credit. except for the crowd around baby jesus. eve took care of that.

lights at grand army. our neighborhood is certainly rough on the edges, but the location is ridiculously great. the museum, the botanic gardens, the library, the park all within three blocks. and around christmas time it is grand army plaza that we love to visit at night. the tree that changes colors and lights up the arch fascinates for all of us, and eve does a strangely good job of guessing the color the tree will be when we first come down the street to see it.

kid's work party. eve now thinks that everyday chip goes to a place where cotton candy is readily available, pigs in a blanket and chocolate milk are continuously supplied, photobooths hang out for your enjoyment, movies about santa and reindeer play on fancy t.v.s and all conference room tables are covered with countless sugar cookies. before this visit eve was convinced chip worked on the train, so at least she understands there's a building involved now.

rockefeller center. started out walking from chip's work, got really lazy really fast and so decided to hop into a pedi cab. worth every dollar. eve waved to the people walking by, the "driver" drove them by the american girl superstore which they had little interest in, and we all hopped out at the huge tree. rockefeller center is an annoying place to be during the holidays- always so crowded- but we managed to have fun seeing the tree and watching the ice skaters. except for ruth. she did not like the ice skaters dressed up as oompa-loompas. something about painted faces and white gloves. a terrifying combination for her. i should probably avoid the circus for awhile.

church party. ruth's first up-close experience with santa. not a fan. eve, however, summoned all her courage and was able to sit on his lap and tell him what she wanted without completely wilting. "i was kinda a little bit nervous, but so i did it anyway."

christmas eve. all our pictures from the event are useless, but nights like this make me think i want to live here forever. the palmers, beans, and jeppesens. such great friends with all our kids gathered together in a brooklyn apartment. of course they won't all stay, but for now it is almost magical being together on nights like this. excellent food, great laughter, a lot of singing (accompanied by guitar and violin- how great is that?) and a ton of dancing by the kids. the nativity acting was so sweet. ruth was primed to be mary but lost focus moments before we started and ended up being a lone, mostly naked, wanderer. but eve was a solid shepherd; her character of choice. the white elephant gift exchange was entertaining. we gave the sad earless and armless sock monkey to the beans and we scored a can of spam from the palmers. i'm calling it food storage.

after leaving around 10pm, eve shouted her "very christmas!" cheers to everyone and we made our way home. we dressed the floppy girls in their christmas pajamas, put out a cookie and egg nog for santa (despite ruthie's protesting that he come into our house) and watched them fall asleep within seconds of their heads hitting the pillows. chip and i set to finishing the wrapping, filling the stockings and getting everything just right for the morning. with the tree lights still glowing we got cozy in bed around 2am, and i fell asleep feeling more excited and giddy than i have in years.

christmas 2007 retrospective: the making

i'm going to have to separate this retrospective out into a few different categories so i don't overwhelm myself and skip it altogether. for those of you chanting "skip it, skip it!" hoping i'll move on to the more exciting grounds of brooklyn home life usually documented here, my apologies. i've got to get this down before it all becomes a distant blur and i start making things up.

i decided 10 days before christmas that i was going to make quilts for the siblings we were giving to this year (we've got a rotating list of who we give to avoid being overwhelmed, which is helpful because even giving to two out of thefamilies seemed to do a fair amount of overwhelming on me). so i set to work cutting and planning while chip was a champion running to purl several times to pick up materials i was short on. miraculously the quilts were complete and out the door in time to arrive in san francisco and provo the day before christmas.

quilt for bobby and megan:

i cannot see bright yellow and lime green without thinking of bobby and megan's wedding. so i threw a little turquoise and some orange print in there and finally made a coin quilt. i love a mostly-white quilt and i wonder if i'll ever venture away from it's simple nature. this quilt is enormous- about 80"x 90". amazingly, all the fabric used was already in my home at the time of project conception, which i love. the back is the softest vintage sheet pieced with some turquoise and the binding is from my third purchasing trip to purl a year and a half ago. a little scary how specific my purchasing memories are. if i thought about it for a few minutes, i could probably tell you what i was wearing on that day too. i'm hoping the very tall bobby and megan get some good cozying and fort-making use out of this.

quilt for emily and scott:

wow. these pictures are not great. in my frenzy to finish and get the boxes out the door i saved photographing until early morning before the sun rose. not my best idea. but hopefully you get the idea. it's a cool quilt, totally simple and inspired by a scarf i made for mim several christmases ago. the random plethora of quilting sucked up several spools of thread, but the "technique" of no-technique-required makes it kind of fun. no stressing about the lines being strait or even. just quilt away until it looks good. having never worked on any quilt bigger than crib sized, wrangling the 60" by 70" (roughly) beast through the machine over and over was laughable, but successful. the tiny wrinkly puckers created in between some of the quilting lines after washing and drying are my favorite part. (first picture taken pre-washing). off-white cotton for the front, high-quality unbleached muslin for the back, orange, turquoise, lime green, yellow thread for the quilting and dark brown cotton for the binding.

hat for baby veronica:

this aviator cap has been sitting, complete, in my home for over three months. i got pregnant and mostly miserable and never got to finishing the second part of the new baby's gift. i'm a really great aunt that way. so, i finally wrapped it up and sent it along with christmas, completely unphotographed, with the second half promised for january. welcome to the world veronica. thank you, emily, for the picture of the babe sporting her new cap- on top of the quilt no less!

home-made applesauce and granola. both really simple and really yummy.

the rest of christmas was bought from mostly local brooklyn shops (with the exception of a few more gifts to the girls' grandparents that are currently "in the works," yes, i am that person too. shamelessly giving away gifts in march that say "merry christmas!" on the card), which was fun in a completely different way.

next up: christmas 2007 retrospective: the build-up.

intentions

i've had plans to post this and that of the happenings and makings (some finally! yay!) of the past couple weeks but time has gotten away from me. perhaps in january i'll do a christmas 2007 retrospective (what's not to love about a retropsective?). for now:

making a list

even after pulling out several to save for eve's birthday, the amount of gifts under last year's tree was embarrassing. so this year i've adopted a little rhyme (courtesy of my sister sarah's neighbor's sister- wow. that's annoying to type, let alone read. . .) to direct my shopping:

"something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read."

i've puchased and wrapped every gift for the girls (not much making happening this year. i blame baby.) and i have it on good authority that santa has his all ready to go too. . . maybe shoved in a closet somewhere until christmas eve.

since the girls are oblivious to this blog until a picture of themselves appears, i will show some of what we've gotten to fulfill our little rhyme. my favorites, as always are great books and simple toys:

something to read:

zoo-ology by joelle jolivet for eve (this is a bigger than normal book with great illustrations and groupings) and ABC by bruno munari for ruth. both are really going to work out for me; entertaining the girls for long periods of time and without getting too burdensome to read to them over and over. both are more about observing and identifying things than following a story-line. i've gotten some other great books as well (i only have so much self control) which will be great for reading and looking at. perhaps i'll do a post (or five) at some point featuring my favorite children's books.

something you want:

i think i spoil my children. but in my defense, eve came up with the request for a camera on her own ("i want that sing that mama has with the pictures on it and you push it for the pictures"). she has been asking for it exclusively for over a month now. she'll be in heaven and i'll get the chance to fix all the settings on my own camera. thank you ebay. i'm not sure ruthie's gift will be as exciting. after watching her pretend play with a barbie at church for nearly 25 minutes today, i'm questioning the blocks, but i love them and am hopeful we'll have a great time building together.

also wrapped up in the closet we have things to wear (jeans and ballet slippers), things they need (umbrellas and underwear) and things ready to stuff in the stockings- courtesy of santa. and i'm fairly certain santa will be giving:

little doctor play kit for eve. perfect, given all the appointments for the girls and myself lately. and duck on bike for ruth. really entertaining. the duck will join the many other tin toys in our home (ride-a-rocket, humming spinning top, russian police car and ambulance among others) almost all by schylling, one of my favorite tin toy companies.

now i just have to start working on chip. not nearly as easy as the girls. . .

"o tannenbaum. . ."

"wie treuse deine bletter. . ." i can't rememeber more than those four (horribly mispelled, i'm sure) words from the german version. but that doesn't change my love for the christmas tree and the season that welcomes it.

after the untimely and crunchy death of last year's tree i have been determined to get my hands on the freshest tree possible. and i did. this year the holiday dream of cutting my own tree came true. there was no snow, no boots, no hot cocoa or axe involved, but there was my family, a saw and plaid wool. not bad.

in fact, it was nearly perfect; the tree, the crisp and clear dusk, the looks of horror on the girls' faces when the tree fell, the birds flying from tree to tree. we even managed to get our 8'8" beauty home from from rhinebeck, ny strapped to the top of the car without too much trouble, thanks to the massive amount of twine strung through and tied all over our little two-door. we had to get in and out through our windows for the food and bathroom breaks on the way home, but i think we all secretly loved it (it will always make me feel like one of the dukes of hazzard). once we were home we all stayed up until 11pm turning our pine into a legitimate christmas tree.

now my home is filled with freshness, winter, rebirth, love and charity all rolled into the scent of fresh pine. which will stay fresh until the day i take it to be chipped into tiny little pieces for the local parks, if all goes according to plan.

++

and thank you to all for your excitement and kind wishes. after another scare and resulting ultrasounds this past thursday i can confirm that we are both doing well and that this IS a boy. (i have two more pictures with giant arrows to prove it).

kids, be thankful

that has been the theme of our last two family nights. we're trying to get them to understand thanksgiving as much as they can. even more, i'm really trying to push the spontaneous (rather than prodded) "thank you." no major progress so far.

last week: thanksgiving jar

jar decorated with pieces of tissue cut mostly by eve and glued on by both girls (when i could get ruth to stop using the glue stick like chapstick). filled with strips of paper listing all the things we're thankful for. some of eve's: jungle book, "smashmallows," drawing on paper, princesses and all paraphenalia she owns or could think of relating to princesses. some of ruth's: eyes, clothes off and "didi boots" (dora and boots). once she thought of dora and boots she wouldn't say anything else, so that's in the jar about seven times.

the plan is to continue adding to the jar until thursday morning when we will read them all to each other and then put a candle in the jar for a "very bootiful" thanksgiving light.

yesterday: the first thanksgiving flannel board story

more felt pieces to tell the story of the pilgrims, mayflower, plymouth rock, the wompanoags, planting, harvesting, feasting and (naturally) being thankful.

i ran out of time for a few major pieces like a turkey and squash/pumpkin, but the rocks and fish i made for the oregon commemoration came in very handy in telling the story in crossing the ocean and plymouth rock, so it all evened out. not sure how much they got from the "we can help and be so thankful and happy for each other" lesson, but they haven't stopped playing with the pieces this morning. and i'm ridiculously happy to have more pieces for the flannel board. i really love the flannel board.

halloween 2007

halloween came and went this year with its usual amount of stress (procrastination is my curse) and fun.

since we were having way too much fun with friends we skipped pumpkin carving this year (which is a good thing, ruthie is far too confident in grabbing and attempting to use knives as it is) and let the girls paint away on their special pumpkin. clearly, tempera paints aren't the best option for pumpkin painting, but it is washable. and when is ruth involved, that is all i care about.

halloween brunch. spiderweb and pumpkin shaped panckakes.

inspired by this post of jeanie's and sarah's comment on said post. i love my sisters. and the girls loved the pancakes which we ate with eggs and beautiful homemade applesauce. the pumpkin pancakes were made with the help of a copper cookie cutter to shape the batter. for the spiderweb pancakes i only had a spoon, although a squirt bottle of some kind would have been much much easier.

the costumes. alice in wonderland and the cheshire cat.

the stress that is a product of my own procrastination is something i'm used to and usually totally comfortable with, because i can always pull things off. not so much this time with ruthie's costume. i needed more time to make it more fantastic and less homemade (you know what i'm saying here, the homemade that looks kind of sad and neglected, not the homemade that we all adore). but, she had a costume and besides the occasional "it's piglet!" (which she totally looks like in these pictures although i swear not as much in real life) or "umm. . . stripey??" many people got it. and as always, together she and eve were a great pair.

the most gratifying part of the costume making process this year was that i did not buy one scrap of fabric, everything is from the very very large stash i already have around the house. for ruth, i made skin-tight pajamas from some knit and applied the stripes out of some wool felt i've had for years. there were plans to make a hat with ears which i think would have made a huge difference, but time and exhaustion got to me. so we went for little felt ears stuck to her head bobby pins. the alice dress was a compilation of two things i know how to pattern (i use that term very loosely) and make; bodice top and circle skirt, along with a peter pan collar, made using this tutorial which is so easy. yes, there are a lot of steps, but it is still so easy.

trick or treating.

or "treasure picking" as eve was calling it. the girls, along with pseudo-little-brother luke, all went together through park slope. another year and another great night. definitely beats having a friend's parent drive you nad your friends from house to house because they were too far apart to walk. eve showed the way at the first house and ruthie got the hang of it immediately. she could hardly be stopped from running full speed stoop to stoop, mountaineering up the stairs, holding her bag out, squeaking "chik a cheat," climbing down and running off to the next bowl of candy. i was not allowed to touch her and the few times i touched her candy bag i regretted it.

the girls were fast and determined for two solid blocks of beautiful brooklyn brownstone stoops (oh, brooklyn. . .) but then hopped into the stroller and crashed. perfect.

this morning i woke up to hearing the stove top beep- my clue that ruthie has climbed on top of the counter in an attempt to get last night's treasure. i shot out of bed, got ruthie off the stove top and amazingly convinced her and eve that yogurt was a better breakfast option than a mars bar.

it's coming

halloween is in 20 days and i am still not positive about costumes for the girls. i'm thinking eve will be alice in wonderland and ruthie will be the cheshire cat. she'd be perfect with that belly of hers. . .

there will certainly be a lot of pictures posted when the costumes are complete (most likely one hour before the first halloween party we go to) but for now, i give you a rich family children halloween retrospective:

2004. sock monkey. here's hoping i get to use this costume again someday. one of my favorites. and yes, chip was the greatest american hero that year.

2005. the sad mouse. i was supposed to have a brand new baby by halloween of 2005. but the day came, ruth was still lodged inside of me and i was unprepared. so, we went with a store-bought costume that we just happened to have hanging in the closet. thanks jeanie!

2006. little red riding hood and the wolf. or the aardvark. you choose. i'm kicking myself for not doing a proper photo shoot, the girls were so adorable together. trick-or-treating in park slope last year is one of our very favorite brooklyn nights of all time. eve would hurry from stoop to stoop with all of her candy bouncing out of the basket and littering the sidewalks as she ran. can't wait for this year when ruthie can run right along beside her. and pick up all the candy and claim it as her own.