Having Abe home for the past three weeks has been glorious. To be perfectly frank, I am terrified about what next week will bring. It would all be easier if I weren’t in cooking school, but I just have to remember that Abe and I both feel extremely good about that decision. I keep going back to those assurances, because starting Monday Abe starts his new job and we will not see each other much for the next four months. I have class three nights a week, and the other two nights Abe will work late. Pity party at my house!
Aside from feeling terrified that our blissful vacation is drawing to an end, today was pretty good. Abe, who is turning 30 this month, even went outside to work on the snow fort…by himself. Lydia refused to go because she didn’t want to get cold, and Mary was napping. Here’s the fruit of his hard work:
He still says it has a long way to go. When he will find time for the going, I don’t know. But doesn’t it look great? Can you imagine the size this would be if we had the weather currently affecting the Midwest?
I got some fun time in with my children, some cooking, some piano, and now I’m about to don headphones while Abe and I snuggle up to watch our separate movies. He’s going to watch training videos for work while I watch youtube piano videos. Super romantic, I know.
Here are today’s pictures:
Okay, Lydia and I played the piano together, read a ton of books, stamped and crafted postcards for her cat, talked on the phone to my mom and Grandma, and yet…there were still somehow many hours left in the day to kill. These no-nap days are craaazy!! Needless to say, she spent a couple hours with Daniel the tiger, too.My house is a mess. Instead of cleaning it, I took a picture and ran to the piano to get more practice in before 9 pm hit.Since I had all the ingredients on hand, dinner tonight was free. (And by that I mean it didn’t come out of this week’s budget. Ain’t no free lunch in real life.) I just braised some cabbage and onion and layered that with some leftover spelt bread (frozen since Christmas) and some cheese I bought a week ago. I drenched it in broth and baked for 30 min. Loosely based on a recipe I read a couple days ago, and I think it was yummy.Mary in her high chair. These times of day make us all so, so fussy.Since Mary had trouble getting to sleep last night, we fed her second dinner to her a little later today. She is a fan of ramen…and, we found out today, milk! She drank a TON of milk tonight. I’ve only been giving the girls water because I don’t like milk, but I guess it turns out their preferences differ from mine.
After Bikram this morning, I came home to discover this:
Abe and Lydia had spent over an hour building this together.They were still outside, hard at work.Lydia packed the snow by kneeling on it.
Abe told me that he’s done with snowmen for the season.
These are leftover remnants of snowmen from the last snow. The one on the right used to be 10 feet tall. Lydia named (all by herself) the one on the left “Snowhopper.” My mom named the one on the right “Mr. Snowshine.” Their time has since passed.
After I came home, Abe went to lunch with his friends, Morgan, Kendall, and Kade. After that he went to his dad’s house to work on his homework for his new job, and so I had the girls to myself. We played, ate, and napped.
During their naps, I read some more of The Hobbit. That book is meant to be read on a day like today:
While I was reading, fat snowflakes were falling outside of my window and I felt so cozy and warm inside. It felt so wonderful to be reading about such adventures while I was snug under my blankets during an actual snowstorm. I also really like the parts of the book where the travelers get hungry–and then really enjoy getting fed. That cycle seems to happen every couple pages, and it never grows old (on me).
In fact, I was so taken with the coziness of the whole situation that I went downstairs and made soup. Then Abe came home and I spent the rest of the evening practicing. Last night I had nightmares that I had memory slips on La Campanella, and I woke up panicky and spent the next thirty minutes trying to see the score in my head. It was nice to address the shaky parts in real life.
Also, I am really nervous about my competition audition tapes. I did not realize they were an actual audition until Abe read the fine print before packing them up to mail. When I made the recordings, I just thought that the judges wanted to see how you played, and it didn’t really matter what you sent in. Those recordings a) weren’t memorized, b) were chock full of technical errors, c) seriously lacked in musicality, in part because of a. But I guess that the good news is, if I don’t make it into this competition, there are tons of other ones around the country, and I can make other recordings–hopefully, ones that I actually like. In the meantime, though, I’m biting my nails and hoping I make it into the competition.
Abe charitably agreed to help me with preschool this morning, even though he still had yet to write the sermon for Jon and Shirley’s marriage AND do a ton of homework for his new job. Our subject was dinosaurs and the letter “L,” and since we didn’t start lesson planning until 10 pm last night, I had to run out early this morning to the library to procure some books on dinosaurs. Driving in the snow was scary, and at one point my car even slipped over a couple lanes. It made me really nervous for Abe’s new commute, which will total two hours a day–in good traffic. Why aren’t we moving to Provo again???
After preschool, Abe left to write the sermon and I stayed home to feed the girls and put them to bed for naps. Both girls napped today, and Mary even took a 4 1/2 hour nap. She had trouble sleeping last night, so I guess she was tired. It was great, though, because during her nap I got to practice, read The Hobbit, and nap myself. On long nap days, I feel like I’m cheating at life. It feels…nice.
Then it was dinner, more piano, reading to the girls, and bed. Lydia has discovered that Mary is a great play mate since Mama is basically absentee, and she goes around the house calling, “Maryyy, Marryyy, where arrre you?? Oh! There you are! I’ve been looking all over with you. Can you come play with me?” I always get nervous because I’m sure Mary can’t understand what Lydia’s saying, and I don’t want Lydia to be disappointed, but somehow Mary and Lydia interact enough to the point where Lydia is convinced they’re actually doing things like playing hide and seek together. Again, Mary can’t understand hide and seek, but actually, neither does Lydia!–so I guess that’s why she thinks they’re playing it successfully.
Lydia also scared the bejeebers out of us by hanging onto a bookshelf today. We have been meaning forever to secure the bookshelves to the wall, but haven’t gotten around to it. Anyway, Abe spanked her for not listening when he told her to let go, and then he cuddled her and explained how scary the situation was. Later at dinner, Lydia said, “Daddy, I love you. I’m sorry I hung on the shelf, and I know why you spanked me. I won’t do it again. I love you.” Our hearts melted on the spot and Lydia got a TON more cuddles and a tootsie roll. Also, Abe is securing those shelves tomorrow.:
These first two pictures are from the dance the kids did to this Dinosaur Stomp song. It was really fun, and we had to replay it three times before calling it quits.
preschool playmore playLydia got her first massage today. She loved it!
This morning we all woke up with tummy aches. Lydia said, “Daddy, we are all sick because we ate meat yesterday. Can we not eat meat anymore?” Abe and I happily yielded to her request (today).
I went to Bikram this morning with Cynthia, and we slid into class a little late. Our instructor, Marc, doesn’t like latecomers, and he often lectures on how latecomers should reflect on the way their behavior affects others around them. Today he was a little milder in his rebukes, but he still delivered a rather stern post-class homily to us on the virtues of punctuality while Cynthia was signing up for her pass.
After sweating it out in yoga, I proceeded to be cold for the rest of the day. (Although I shouldn’t complain–the recent reports and pictures from the Midwest make Salt Lake look like the tropics right about now). When I finally warmed up enough to move, we packed up my sewing machine and took it to a sewing shop in Murray that does repairs on warranty. I KNOW my machine could not sew buttonholes last I checked (in June), but it magically fixed itself on the way to the shop. I felt like an idiot for bringing it in–but a happy idiot, since no further repairs are needed. Now I can sew buttonholes all day long if I want to!
Speaking of repairs, Abe has spent hours this week following various tutorials on how to break a Master Lock. We lost the combination to a lock we have on a door that leads to the roof, and Abe tried hundreds of combinations before finally just taking a hack saw to the clasp. I felt sorry for my poor husband, frustrated to the point of having to use a hack saw on his vacation. Also, his vacation ended today with an email giving him loads and loads of homework for his new job. It’s been fun while it lasted.
I also read Preethi’s recent blog on resolutions and loved her idea of having her toddler start memorizing scriptures. Lydia and I started on this today, and I have to say, after an hour of drilling, drilling, drilling, Lydia’s recitation of the first clause in 1 Nephi 3:7 was… spotty. Preethi, if you’re reading this, how do you do it?
Also, my friend, Maria, and I have been exchanging a very fun, spirited set of emails on Amy Chua (she has a new, super controversial book out, people!). As Lydia and I repeated the same clause over and over (at least a hundred times, no exaggeration), I did feel slightly closer to Amy Chua (my number 2 idol, right after Martha.) Maria made the awesome point that Amy Chua takes sole credit for her daughters’ success when actually, a whole host of unacknowledged social privilege played into that. So true! But I still admire Amy Chua’s personality, humor, intelligence, and even her ability to play the media. The link in this paragraph actually irritated me quite a bit because the reviewers seemed not only derisive, but dim. But I’m lazy and it’s the first thing I clicked on when I googled her new book…by now I should have just gone back and changed it to the simple Amazon link, seriously.
Here are today’s pictures:
Lydia was picking her nose with the corner of this paper just seconds before the picture snapped.We took this picture because we realized during dinner that we thought we hadn’t taken any pictures today and wanted a blog picture.Same reason for this one.Then I took some of Abe for his linkedin profile. This is a contender.One of Lydia’s favorite games is to pretend Minnie Mouse is shopping in these “stores.”We have to distract Mary because if Mary touches the Minnie Mouse set-up, Lydia loses it. We could just make Lydia deal, but we’re not always up for noise decibel that entails.
Meat. It happened today at Goodwood BBQ, where we got together with Karin, Jay and David to bid David adieu before he leaves for Paris. With the storms, though, he found out (during lunch) that he will be in Utah for a couple more days than originally planned. The meat was still there, though, and Abe and I enjoyed it a lot…and have felt rather sick ever since.
Lydia after the meal.Karin is strong! Abe and I struggle to do this these days…
Oh, to be a child. Lydia was so excited to discover a “forest” outside of the restaurant.After showing me the forest, the girls ran to the nearest bench, which was almost as exciting as the “forest.”
For dinner, we ate cabbage and onions, and after that we felt much better. (Does that last sentence conjure up a very hungry caterpillar for anyone else?)
OH! And okay, for real, I think I found a book I can finally finish. I checked out The Hobbit today. I haven’t read it since I was in middle school, and I am so, so excited about it. That’s what I will be doing right about…now.
The only time in my life I’ve ever been good at fasting was on my mission. That was kind of the Golden Era of fasting in my life, and ever since then I have really struggled. Usually, I break down a couple hours before dinner because all I can think of is food. Last month I didn’t even make it past breakfast! At least today I made it until after my post-church nap, but then I started thinking about food and couldn’t stop. The theme at church seemed to be “God loves us no matter what. Even if we literally can not get out of bed, God loves us as much as if we were the most active, productive people in the world. His love is unchanging.” As I forked into my spaghetti, I was comforted by that message. Next month I will try again.
The pace of the day picked up after that, when I attempted to make a big batch of soup from dried black beans. Here’s something I am ashamed about: I have only tried cooking with dried beans (lentils don’t count) twice in my life, and both times were a huge flop! Until now, I have opted for the cans. But they are so darn expensive, so last night I tried again to soak a bunch of black beans to cook today. I soaked them overnight, cooked them for hours, and reread Mark Bittman’s little homily on the ease and economy of dried beans to bolster my courage. However, even after all of that, my beans still weren’t as creamy as the canned kind. Does anyone know if they need to soak for two days? Cook for six hours? What am I doing wrong?
After I turned my fibrous, less-than-creamy beans into soup, we rushed out the door to drop the kids off at Tom and Suzanne’s so we could attend a baby blessing. Our friends, Aria and Clay Rockwood, had a home blessing tonight. It was exactly the same as a blessing in church, only a lot more fun and with food. They had the best bruschetta I have ever eaten in my life, and Abe and I embarrassed ourselves by going back for…fifths. Aria’s going to send me the recipe for her spread (which involves feta, cream cheese, butter and lemon). Have you ever seen the scene in Julie and Julia where Julie and her husband are eating bruschetta for dinner? I LOVE that scene, and tonight, I lived it out in person. What a dream!
Then we hung out at Tom and Suzanne’s until the girls were so tired that we took them home and put them straight to bed, sans baths.
Here are today’s pictures (also, I figured out yesterday’s pictures, so I amended yesterday’s post, too):
As I was cleaning the kitchen tonight, I saw this duck on the floor and felt overwhelmed with gratitude that I am a mother of small children. Some day they won’t leave sweet evidences of innocent play all over the house, and that will be sad.Lydia wailed when we removed her from the side of her grandpa. She thoroughly enjoyed her evening with Tom and Suzanne.Lydia was born into a family the loves technology.
The only exciting thing I have to report on today is that we went ice skating. Misty, Rich, their kids and some more of their family came too, so it felt like a party. Both Lydia and Mary loooooved ice skating, although Mary got the hang of it a lot quicker. (And by “got the hang of it,” I really mean: She moved her feet like she was skating while Abe and I did the real work of holding her upright as we circled on the ice.) Before we went, Lydia kept telling me that Sophia would hold her hand and teach her how to skate because Sophia was a big girl and knew how to do that already. Maybe she got that idea because the little girl we watched on Youtube yesterday was blonde. At any rate, Abe and I practically threw out our backs helping Lydia skate–she loved the experience, but she was timid and limp the whole time (translation: dead weight).
Abe took pictures on his phone, but the files won’t transfer to the blog. Bummer, since nothing of note happened for the rest of the day. But not a serious bummer, since despite my 270 minutes of exercise this week, I look, um, not skinny in all of the pictures.
Oh! And I memorized my scherzo today. That was happy. All I have left is my Brahms, and my little competition line-up will be 100% memorized.
And now Abe is playing computer games with his brother because his brother is about to leave town, so I’m on my own tonight. Thanks to my brother and sister-in-law, I have Netflix to keep me company. Good night!
This is the day after. We fixed the picture problem, so here are the pictures from ice skating:
Mary, bless her, took a four hour nap today. During that time, Abe made his final trip to the office, and I parented Lydia horizontally from bed. Mainly she ran around the house playing pretend while I lay there exhausted, but she did climb up a couple of times and join me. We watched a lot of figure-skating Youtube videos together and daydreamed jointly about Lydia ice skating. I think I will take her ice skating tomorrow since she was so excited about it.
After Abe came home, I left to do Bikram and some grocery shopping. Today is the first day of my new budget, and I have already spent half of my weekly allowance. Although this is cause for alarm, I am also really excited to finally bite the bullet and adjust. I feel like this new regime will make me a better, more disciplined person, and, frankly, I’ll take that over great cheese any day. (Although I quite like great cheese…)
While I was gone, Abe and the girls organized the basement craft station, and now we only have one more closet to go before our house is totally organized (at least by our loose standards). I am so excited!
Since I was sweaty and gross after Bikram, I jumped in the bath with Lydia and Mary. Lydia had fun dumping water all over me and told me to “be brave.” (She watched Brave today.)
I forgot to take pictures since I spent most of the day in bed. Maybe tomorrow?
Abe and I didn’t roll out of bed intending to take the day by storm. We had two things on our agenda: The Jewish Community Center (to sign Lydia up for preschool) and the Library (to pay down our fines).
But the day had us in its sights. From morning until evening, it was packed with events, planned and unplanned, delightful and…well, less than delightful.
First off, we fell in love with the JCC again. Thank goodness we have been saving up for it, because with Abe’s new, slimmer salary, we would not be able to pull off tuition otherwise. As it is, I have to figure out how to feed a family of four three meals a day (plus snacks!) on less than a quarter of my former budget. I figure it comes out to about $1.75 a meal–for ALL of us. I’ll post any ingenious, creative meal solutions, but since I am currently stumped, we’ve started eating Ramen. Thank goodness Mary seems to be a huge fan! As long as we don’t all die of sodium and MSG in the next few months, Ramen it will have to be. But, as Abe pointed out, at least Lydia’s education will be stellar, and that trumps fancy (fresh?) food…we think.
And as long as we’re on the topic of budgeting, today we spent two hours at the library reading to our children–and paid down $24.00 in fines! (I had $31.00 in fines to begin with.) By the time we were done, Abe was glassy-eyed and unresponsive, Mary was sleepy, and Lydia declared herself “fursty (thirsty), hungwee (hungry) and sweepy (sleepy)–every of them!” I felt a little guilty (not to mention dehydrated) for putting us all through that, but there was a smidgen of triumph in there as well. I mean, it’s a brand new year, and my fines are almost entirely paid off!
Then we came home and got everyone fed and rested, right before I got a call from a dear old friend letting me know she and her mother were in town and could drop by. It was an opportunity too good to pass up, so I raced downstairs and took down ALL of the Christmas decorations and vacuumed like crazy before she arrived. Abe had a nightmare during his nap which woke him up, so he came down and helped. By the time my friend and her mom arrived, the house was completely, 100% Christmas-decoration-free.
My friend, Carolina, was my first friend when I transitioned away from my Presbyterian upbringing and started attending the Mormon church at the age of 13. It was a huge cultural shock, and all of the kids at my new church had known each other since infancy. I had been quite solidly integrated into my old church, and entering a new, foreign environment was scary–especially since I was so shy I couldn’t even bring myself to talk to anyone for the first year. Carolina, though, was a familiar face, since her mom and my mom had let us play together a couple times throughout my childhood. She was so kind to me, and she was the only person at church I felt comfortable being around for a loooong time. It was a deep joy to see her and her lovely mom today, and I loved meeting her little daughter, Leah. Carolina now lives in Utah, so I hope to see more of her now that we’ve reconnected.
After our impromptu reunion with Carolina and Derly, Abe and I went through our regular dinner-bath-bedtime-piano practice routine. After I finished practicing (I memorized the Bach today!!), I went upstairs to check on the girls, who had been giggling and squealing ever since we put them to bed. Shortly before I checked on them, their laughs had turned to sobs. I grabbed my camera before entering, since I hadn’t taken a single photo of the day, and since I expected only to find two tired out little girls. When I entered the room, I immediately took the following picture. It wasn’t until after I’d taken the picture that I realized what had happened…
Lydia had poured baby powder all over herself and Mary, and she’d smeared diaper rash cream into her hair and Mary’s. Mary was pretty upset.
I immediately picked up Mary and took her to the bathroom to bathe her again, and when Abe came up, he took a close-up of Lydia before bringing her to the bathroom, too.
Lydia was hysterical for the next hour. Scrubbing diaper rash cream out of hair is crazy difficult, and both girls were exhausted and very, very sad by the time we finished.
Poor little things. Despite the fact that we heartlessly photographed their pain, we actually felt really bad for them. At the same time, we feel happy because after the cleaning ordeal, we are sure Lydia will never do this again.
I am going to go read my first book of the new year now. Maybe I’ll finally be able to finish one!
Happy New Year! Last night Abe and I watched the entire Salt Lake valley explode into fireworks from our bedroom window. It was beautiful! I remember having New Year’s on my mission (in Salt Lake) and wanting so badly to see the fireworks, and with that memory in mind, I enjoyed the luxury of watching the fireworks a little extra last night.
After Bikram this morning, I tried to make sure that I was heading into the new year with only positive connotations about everyone I know. To the best of my knowledge, I think I’m heading into the new year with happy and grateful feelings about all of my friends and acquaintances; if I had any official resolutions, the first would be to keep it that way all year long. If you’re in my life and reading this, know that you are appreciated, respected and loved. If you’re in my life and not reading this, then you’re still appreciated, respected and loved…and I’ll have to try to find ways of communicating that throughout this coming year.
Here are today’s pictures:
We took the girls to the playground today, since it was actually pretty nice out.
In their winter clothes, they made the jogger soooo heavy.Lydia fell asleep on the way to the playground, so Mary got some attention all to herself.She loved going down the slide.I loved cuddling her, but she was wriggling to get down and play some more.…and then Lydia woke up and bravely walked across the wobbly bridge. I love the way she cautiously holds on (an inherited trait from my side of the family).
After dinner, Lydia was in a snuggly mood.
We missed FHE on Monday, so we had it today. We acted out the walls of Jericho three times, and then Abe built a mountain out of pillows which the girls proceeded to repeatedly climb for the next thirty minutes.
Circling the “walls of Jericho.”
Mary was in heaven climbing this mountain of pillows. She’s a happy girl, but Abe remarked that he’s never seen her that happy…and we suspect she would have kept climbing for days–given the opportunity.
He still says it has a long way to go. When he will find time for the going, I don’t know. But doesn’t it look great? Can you imagine the size this would be if we had the weather currently affecting the Midwest?
