7 Quick Takes -- Vol. 22

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Quotes of the Week 
D: Maybe when you grow up, Annie, you’ll be a famous scientist.
A: NO. Famous scientist BABY.

Annie, singing softly to her baby doll:
Hush hush baybee, no cwy baybee.

Quizzing Walter (Bobay) on the Bible story of Jesus & the little children:
M: And what did the disciples say?
W: Oh, hi Bobay!
M: okkkkkkk...and what did Jesus say?
W: Hi Bobay too!

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Sunday was Mother’s Day. The day was a bit of a difficult one, as HeWhoShallNotBeNamed decided that it would be a really great idea to throw tantrums all day. And we were in the final throws of David’s latest round of publication craziness, meaning that us adults were both exhausted. But of course I still had a lovely time – they’d made me the most wonderful Mother’s Day card (from an upcycled Christmas card and featuring “the white ashes of love” and we went for an amazing sushi lunch at this all you can eat place that my brother recommended. Lunch was fantastic, both with the food, the happy babies, and the dining experience of incredibly surly wait-staff who seemed to really resent having to serve us all we could eat! Annie ate 1.5 bowls of udon while I enjoyed sharing a plate with Walter. Trying to feed a toddler with chopsticks was an hilarious experience – I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.

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Speaking of laughing, I’ve been listening to the “Fountains of Carrots” podcast at work and it is amazing. I laugh, I cry, I probably appear insane to all those around me... These ladies share my taste in books, art, and faith. I can’t get enough! This recent podcast on "The Art of Making Do" is one of my absolute favourites. It was so encouraging listening to another working mum speak about parenting & life & faith. All this great common sense came through the conversation, like how we do what’s best for OUR families, even if that doesn’t look like what’s best for someone else’s family. It made my heart happy to hear the acknowledgement that sometimes both parents have to work because those are the cards life dealt them, not because they should just be better at budgeting or are sacrificing their family on an altar of money. Most of the other young mum’s I know are able to stay at home, so it can get a bit lonely feeling at times because my days are so different.

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Book of the Week This week I finished reading Kipling’s Indian Tales. I liked about 50% of the stories. The good ones were really good, but the rest of the book was a bit hard to follow or just “meh”. David agreed, so now I know I’m not just missing something.

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My cousin Tara just had a darling baby girl. I made her this:

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A month ago, we made a good dent in the stock at Sikora – they had an amazing sale for Record Store Day. We’ve been listening to one album of beautiful music each night since then. It’s been a treat! Alas, we’ve now exhausted all of our purchases aside from some big boxed opera sets. Good thing a stack of Stompin’ Tom & Chad Mitchell just arrived yesterday.

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Album of the Week For Mother’s Day the gang gave me a sealed copy of the Mitchell Trio’s 1963 album “The Best of the Chad Mitchell Trio”. It was very exciting getting a sealed LP of one of my favourite North American folk groups! The album is mostly humorous songs with a few traditional folk & gospel songs added for good measure. I really liked comparing the recordings on this album to others of the same songs. I felt that the album went at a slower pace and that the music was a little less theatrical than some of their later works. We had a really great time listening through the album once the kids went to sleep. This is one of my favourites: 

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7 Quick Takes -- Vol. 21, or mostly the No Sleep Blues

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You might be familiar with the plight of Meriam Yehya Ibrahim. I saw brief mention of it on the news the other night, and I’ve read more in-depth articles via my Facebook feed. A friend of mine wrote an excellent article with all the information one needs in order to help voice outrage at this case to the appropriate people. Spare a minute, click the relevant links, and add your voice to ours. Saints Felicity & Perpetua, pray for us!

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St Felicity is the saint that I chose for Emily, so I have felt particular outrage at Meriam’s story (as she has been likened to a modern day St Perpetua/St Felicity). SS Perpetua & Felicity were some of the first non-Biblical saints that I’d heard of. I thought maybe I was being silly for choosing a martyr of the early church, because it didn’t seem like it might be relevant any more. Clearly I was wrong.

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On a happier note, at least for me...David & I have been really lucky to get a couple date nights recently – we put the kids to bed and my parents obligingly watch them while we head to the late show. We’ve seen Neighbours, which I loved, and Godzilla, which I only found so-so. Driving home from the movie theater makes me feel so young, because late-night drives across Port Alberni always take me back to the summers when I was a desk clerk at the Esta Villa Motel and worked the late shift.

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And in other news...this has been the week of no sleep blues. On Sunday the monsters babies both slept in so late that we were late for Mass because our human alarm clocks didn’t go off at all. After that, most nights, it’s been a party here from 2-5am. Not fun. Possibly, hopefully a growth spurt that will end soon???

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I’ve been too sluggish feeling to contemplate leaving the house, so we’ve been trying to get our exercise this week by frisbee playing. It’s loads of fun to toss it around in the backyard after supper. Walter runs & plays & occasionally comes over to see what the adults are doing, and Emily sits outside in a little rocking chair, cheering & waving her legs & sucking on her shoes.

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Although this has been a week of no sleep blues, I’ve at least been rockin’ in the kitchen when I finally haul my butt in there. Highlights – Long Boy Cheeseburgers (and thanks to my cousin for an old Menu Plan Monday that led me to these babies), buffalo wings, honey mustard pork roast with crackling....so good. And both kids have been eating like there’s no tomorrow, with Walter even saying a big “yeah!” to the question of if he liked mama’s special chicken.

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Brain too fried to come up with another take, so here’s the theme song for this week (Incredible String Band's No Sleep Blues)

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7 Quick Takes -- Vol. 20

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In an attempt to try to get healthy & keep a handle on my well-being even on days when I can barely get a moment to think, I’m keeping a food diary again. I did this a couple of years ago and found it really useful. I’ve gone a little more hi-tech this time around, and at my brother’s recommendation am using myfitnesspal.com (+app on my new iphone!).

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It’s interesting to look back at each day and see the relation between the day, the weather, my food choices, and my overall mood. For example, this Wednesday was really awesome. I managed to eat well and get some great cardio exercise (pushing 70+lbs of baby up & down hilly gravel paths). I felt really energized and thus made better food choices. Whereas Thursday, where the children were non-stop-attention-seeking-monsters, was a bad day. Bad food choices, partially motivated by not enough time to do anything but heat up freezer food and partially motivated by stress cravings, meant a really unbalanced day. And it poured with rain all day, so I couldn’t escape for a sanity walk with the monsters!

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David’s been away since Tuesday and to say that the kids have been a handful would be putting it mildly. It didn’t help that we had the flu on the weekend and they were still getting over it. It was so, so nice tonight to see them actually playing together instead of fighting with each other/me. Walter was hiding in a curtain and Emily was trying to find him in it and they were both laughing hysterically, as was I. Sometimes laughter is the best medicine.

Playing together one evening last week: even managing to sit side by side without fighting/crying. Miracle of miracles!

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Fortune’s Wheel still seems to have us in her lower half. But I’m trying to be brave and not give in...so when my dad, who’s messed up his knee, asked me to walk to the mailbox today I took the kids for a cardio-heavy walk around the block, instead of just walking to get the post & returning to my melancholy musing on the couch, and tried to just enjoy the moment. And it mostly worked :)

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My Gramma has dementia, and lately she’s been pretty out of it. But today when I saw her for dinner she seemed in fine form. Instead of her usual four topics of conversation, she actually seemed involved in what the rest of us were doing. And she thought to ask if there should be some other ladies (my cousins) with us, which is great because a lot of the time she can’t remember us when we’re not there. It was so special to have a relatively normal evening with her, especially this close to Mother’s Day.

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When David flew out on Tuesday, he left from a small, relatively local (Nanaimo) airport. We had such blast dropping him off. The airport is so small that departures/security were right beside his check-in desk, and the staff were super friendly (so much so that when the check-in attendant saw the long line at security, she told us to go and enjoy some coffees for awhile before he bothered going through, even tho’ his bags were already tagged and technically you’re supposed to proceed straight through security at that point...or at least them’s the facts in Vancouver). We got to spend a lovely hour with him before he took off, and it’s one of the most relaxing times we’ve had at an airport in recent memory.

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I recently had to cancel a trip that I’d really been looking forward to, because my health couldn’t handle the additional stress of it. To cheer me up, David got me Jennifer Fulwiler’s new book, Something Other than God. I probably won’t get to start reading it until June, but it seems like everyone else is loving it so I’m sure that I will too. Ordering a new book, especially one that isn’t fiction, is a big thing for me as I usually only ask to own books that I’ve read before (or where I’m so familiar with the author that I know I’ll love the book). Needless to say, I’m really excited to get my hands on it!

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7 Quick Takes - Vol. 19

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Last year, when we moved out of our college accommodation, we donated/gave away a lot of our things, including all of our generic Christmas decorations. Now we’re in the position of having Christmas away from our families, so I’m trying to jolly up the house (and our moods) by making things here as nice as possible, without wanting to spend the cash we don’t have on replacing all the generic stuff we don’t want to keep. Solution – diy Christmas decor using things commonly found in the house (or: Kindergarten craft time). So far I’ve made 31 paper snowflakes to decorate the windows with and two popcorn strings for the tree. Making the popcorn strings, with Walter’s help, was the best. He kept raiding the bowl of popcorn, taking one piece, and going “mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm” very loudly as he ran away.

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I’m sure I’ve mentioned how much I dislike baking. So much about it bothers me – the mess, the finickyness, the patience required... of course I still bake things, but my preferred recipes are of the no fuss, little effort variety. Thus I thought I’d tackle Christmas baking this year as part of my regular weekly lot. In England people are more likely to have mince pies or Christmas pudding for company, and we haven’t many plans with friends over the season, so I don’t need a huge batch of dainties like I would back home. I picked three tried & tested recipes from my recipe folder. I’ve been baking one each week for the last three weeks, freezing half to make part of our Christmas stash (which we really only need for Tree Decorating Night and Christmas Eve). The choices? Lemon Snow Bars (because LEMON!!!), Boderkoek (a Mennonite Christmas tradition) & Chocolate Torte (in lieu of brownies. Chocolate overdose!).

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When I complain about baking, my best friend reminds me that she enjoys it but dislikes cooking, which I love. We work as a good team in the kitchen and whenever I bake with her it turns into an enjoyable experience. She even helped me make baklava one year and everyone survived! And it was delicious! And I didn’t explode from rage! She suggested that we try living in the same city again so that I can do the cooking and she can do the baking and, as I pointed out, our husbands can get very fat.

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Now that Emily’s three month’s old, she’s showing that her newborn sleepiness is wearing off and a pseudo-sleep-schedule is emerging. She’s a pretty good sleeper, at least compared to Walter, but there are a few evenings each week where she needs some aid to get sleepy. Those are exhausting evenings, because I usually don’t need to step in unless it’s past ten pm and she’s still awake, but at the same time they are what beautiful memories are made of. I’m loving being able to rock and sing to her for such a long time.

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It’s been a depressing few weeks, with bad weather and a sick family. To cheer us all up, among other reasons, David entered a contest on the Catholic Herald for the best English translation of an article they published in Latin. We were all thrilled to find out that he won! They sent him a book as a prize. It was a really nice bit of cheer and excitement to drive away the winter blues.

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This is the first Advent in two years when I haven’t been in the early stages of pregnancy. It is soooooooooooo nice.

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I was all set to write velvety happy nonsense feelings about babies and family size but then the children stopped acting like society’s view of the Well Brought-up Child and started acting like normal children (ie that moment when you glance at the clock and realise it’s 5am and you really have been up since before 3 mothering one after the other and why on earth does Walter have to go through yet another phase of screaming constantly all day long if he wants attention or is told “no” and is Emily’s colic returning andandand)... and I’m exhausted. But at least they’ve been compensating with lots of Emily smiles and Walter kiss-hug-attacks.

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