things

I love Isaac's grumpy face.  It is so cute.  He was mad about getting out of the bathtub and I left him rolled up in a towel so I could snap a few shots of his funny little grumpy face.

 Speaking of grumpy faces, last week I set my treadmill on fire.  It was pretty scary--I'd run just short of five miles and I smelled this awful burning smell.  And then there was smoke billowing out from under the electronics hood.  And then Neil looked at it when he got home and guess what?  I melted the capacitor.  (it is still not fixed which is why I am grumpy, although it is nice to get my run done early because I have to go running outside before Neil leaves.  The hills around our house are totally killing me after several months of the treadmill...)

 Last week one of my friends set up this candy-cane making thingie--we went to a historic candy store downtown and watched the candy-cane making process and then the kids "hooked" their own.  Super cool stuff. The pictures are pretty awful (my replacement camera is arriving any day now, hurray!) but...oh well.

Here's the huge pile of crazy hot molten candy (above) and the guy incorporating air into the candy (below, to turn it white) by hooking it and pulling it over this wall-mounted hook over and over--basically pulling it like taffy.  He did this SO fast--it was pretty impressive.

One thing that I thought was really neat--they just had this HUGE lump of candy and it's all twisted into the colors and stripes by hand.  The guy doing it was so fast, and it came out perfectly every time!

 Here is Isaac screaming on the floor.  I was carrying both Isaac and Luke for almost the whole time until my arms gave out.  Isaac HATED the candy store.  Worst mom ever!  Forcing my children to make candy canes!  Oh, the sweatshopness of it all!!  He cried almost the entire time we were there.  Fortunately the girls loved it.  Anyway, look at the awesome windows and the beautiful marble-slab tables.  Bad lighting for my weak little camera, but it was beautiful.

 Although Abigail was pretty bored once we'd made her candy cane ("Come on, Mom, stop making me pose and let me eat this thing already...")

 We've been incredibly busy the last couple weeks, which is part of the reason why I've been super lame about blogging (can you tell my general apathy from this post?)

One of the things we did was to go to Abigail's dance thingie...

We've also made a lot of Christmas goodies, driven around looking at a ton of lights, visited the Children's Museum, and had lots and lots of Fireplace Nights.  We instituted this a couple of months ago--every Wednesday night we light a fire and snuggle up and read together.  In the picture above we're reading Christmas books, but usually it's things that the kids wouldn't normally read for years, but we want to make a part of their childhoods--we've been reading a lot of Rudyard Kipling, for instance.  This time together is based on the book Honey for a Child's Heart, which I would highly highly highly recommend.

And now I have to go because Juliet is getting desperate for me to read to her.  The end.

Seven months

 At seven months, Luke is developing into the cutest little munchkin!  He is mostly sleeping through the night (we still have to get up to give him his pacifier every so often, but it's a vast improvement over where we were a month ago).  And he is firmly on that four-hour schedule, which is blissful for all of us.

 Luke has two little teeth and spends a lot of his time up rocking on his hands and knees.  He is INCREDIBLY fast going backwards but still hasn't figured out how to go forwards (much to Abigail's dismay:  every couple of days she sits down with him and very patiently tries to explain to him how to move forward.  But he can't do it!  She demonstrates over and over and then waits for him to go, but...no dice.  It's pretty funny to watch, actually).

Isaac spends a lot of his time these days with "Yookey."  In the picture above he was upset because Luke kept rolling over and grabbing Isaac's face, so that's why Isaac is holding his arm up.

Most of the time they play pretty well together--Luke is interested in watching Isaac and Isaac wants Luke to be with him--as long as Luke doesn't touch Isaac's toys.  Things should get really interesting here in another month or so...

today was good

I had one of those nights last night where you just can't sleep.  I fell asleep too early, woke up when Neil came to bed, he asked me a question about something I was really stressed about, and it ended up being another 4 hours before I fell back asleep.  So when I woke up this morning, I was totally groggy and literally falling asleep every time I was still.  I honestly could not fathom how I was going to make it through the day!

But in looking back over the day, it was a good day.  It was my day in Abigail's classroom this morning and we had a few minutes of snuggle time in the poetry corner that were just lovely.  I found time to clean my kitchen during lunch when everyone was miraculously entertained by food.  Neil worked from home this morning (while I was at the school) so that Luke could nap in his bed rather than taking a catnap in the stroller, and wonder of wonders, Luke slept the ENTIRE time I was gone!!  Jules and I had a few quiet moments to read our chapter of Little House on the Prairie and put together a Family Home Evening lesson for this evening.  I remembered to start making bread early enough to greet Abigail with a warm slice as she came home from school.  I made it to Abigail's dance recital on time with all four kids (no small feat, I can assure you).  We had family home evening afterwards and everyone actually paid attention (another miracle!).  And as the children were falling asleep, I sat at the piano and played some Christmas carols by the light of the tree, then switched over to Beethoven and Bach and Schumann as they were drifting off to slumberland.  It felt like a Norman Rockwell painting or something bizarrely idealistic but perfectly sweet at the same time.

So I survived.  :-) 

Merry Christmas to me!

As I was doing all my Christmas planning earlier this year, I thought, "What would I give myself if I could?"  And I knew immediately--time to do some of those things that I always look at and think, "Argh, wish I had time to do that!"

So as my gift to myself this year, I sat down and made a list of things that I have wanted to tackle, but they just haven't been of sufficiently high priority to override something else, but they've been nagging away at me (you know the kind of thing I mean?)  I assigned one to every day for the next three weeks (so I am ending before family arrives...do not fret, family!  You will not be pressed into servitude).

Today Isaac and I are tackling the pantry.  It has been driving me INSANE since I reorganized it for a photo shoot a couple of months back (turns out I really dislike having all my home-canned foods taking up so much pantry space as opposed to being stored in boxes--they look beautiful but it's not worth it when I am frantically trying to find the cashews or the quinoa that have been hidden behind the jars).

What would you give yourself?