a year ago

Last year as February was rolling out and March barreling in, I was bracing for some serious cold. We had a mild winter last year, even by Colorado standards, and after seven years in northern Indiana (land of the 6-month-freeze) I was assuming the cold would hit in earnest any day. And that it would last through June to compensate for the late start. But the cold never came. March rolled in like a lamb, and left with a blissfully extended baaaaaa.

Last year as february rolled out I was still figuring out how to parent across a spectrum that included teens and an infant. While I'm still figuring that out (and anticipate working on it for, well, forever), we seem to have found at least some semblance of rhythm. And oh, looking at the photos from last year, those baby toes are irresistible.

This week that tiny baby is playing "face plant." I missed the first twenty-five drops, but still. The boy is an absolute clown. And yes, we do usually try to keep the marbles off the floor. Oh well.

Last year seems like a very long time ago, but the sunny warmth of the day today got me thinking backwards. Maybe we're in for another early, mild spring.

I wouldn't mind.

visual obsessions: sepia

Way back in 2003, we received our first digital camera. Our photo library from that year is pretty sparse (ever the slow-to-change girl, I was wary of filmless photography) and our computer space even sparser. I only have a few dozen pictures archived from 2003, and of those, fully half seem to be saved in sepia. I don't know if it was the novelty of photo-adjustment software (ahhh, no more red eyes), or if I was feeling extra nostalgic for the faded prints of my childhood, but I seem to have gone a little overboard. Eventually my husband, who had actually learned the non-sepia aspects of the software, suggested I duplicate the photos before playing with them -- ingeniously simple, if slightly more space consuming.

But in those early years my originals are the experimentals.

Looking back through them today, I find the sepia effect thoroughly appropriate. Those first years were my long ago and old fashioned, my novice experimentation, those simpler days with just three little kids and no lessons, no school, no long-term-financial-plan, no real sense of the passing of time.

And yet. I say all that fully aware that "back then" nothing seemed simple, that three little kids was a completely overwhelming dynamic, that I was tired, anxious, and uncertain just as often as I can be today.

But the sepia soothes the print, takes out the glaring colors and off-tune composition, and leaves for me a sense of the joy and confusion and wonder those years contained as well, of our continual forays into new beauty -- within nature and home and all of the people I so intensively loved.

Those pictures ignite a sensation that once upon a time things were somehow more open and clear, and that someday maybe they will be again.

a break and some balance

In the end, a three week break from school proved to be rejuvenating after all.

If you sense a tone of surprise, that's because "vacation" and "rejuvenation" have rarely gone together around here. I am going to go way out on a limb and assume that for some parents the peak of enjoyment is traveling with and entertaining sugar-hyped kids. Either that, or there are a lot of parents out there willing to take far more for the team than I tend to be. Either way, the expectation of vacation, not to mention vacation itself, can sometimes put me right on the edge of a nervous breakdown. I generally need a solid week to recover from a long weekend.

I remember vacations before I was responsible for anyone else, and long before I was expected to keep the train rolling on through, as it were. Vacations meant books and naps and hours in the grass, watching clouds. Over the past decade, they have meant extra laundry and food prep on the fly, combined with limited sleep and even less quiet. This has to be some sort of mistake, I find myself thinking. Surely there is a way to vacation that is like, well, a vacation.

More recently I have been trying to learn to simplify and streamline (and plan, oh my); trying to find that elusive middle ground of enough activity and enough relaxation. For all of us.

And this winter break, for the first time in a long long time, we somewhow seemed to landed well in that middle ground range. Visits with cousins and grandparents and books on the couch; skiing and sleeping in. Juggling seven kids downtown for ice cream and a solo trip with the birthday boy for a donut.

Ahhh, balance. I'm always so startled when it happens to show up.

We closed out our break with a trip to the ice rink downtown. A good place to put the finishing touches on balance.

School starts back up tomorrow: early mornings and homework and long miles in the dark on bikes. Back to the rhythm of days and nights and weekends. Back to the rhythm of quiet during naptime and remembering to make dinner.

Back to a renewed search for balance.

kids in the kitchen

I'll admit, I can be skittish about kids in my kitchen. There are so many sharp items and so many places that heat up. And when I'm working on a meal, there are also generally about five hundred other things going on at the same time; it's hard to concentrate in chaos, and even harder to concentrate when the chaos is "helping." But with three meals for eight people to prepare everyday, I have happily relinquished lunchtime to the ten year-old.

She brought five cookbooks home from the library last night. Annabel Karmel's "Mom and Me Cookbook" made its debut today. Since I was juggling two babies all morning, the ten year-old assumed the role of Mom, with a five year-old assiting as the Me. They pulled off guacamole, drinks, and even pizza (complete with yeast dough from scratch -- I kid you not).

The food was fantastic, with the pizza being crowned the favorite homemade version ever.

The muffins, however, had a little trouble. I thought that was only fair. I mean two-out-of-three is a thoroughly respectable showing for one's first time running a kitchen, don't you think?

trees that smell like trees

When I was growing up, our Christmas tree was always freshly cut. Freshly cut, and then flocked and covered in pink lights, pink bows, and clip-on pink birds. To paraphrase a four year-old we once knew, it looked like a flamingo threw up in our living room. Granted this was the 70's and 80's, and granted we were a household of girls, girls, girls, but pink? My aesthetic sensibilities of today recoil, but back then I loved it all -- the colors, the fluff, and most of all the smell.

Ahhh, the smell of fresh pine. Forget cinnamon and nutmeg -- this is the smell of Christmas. Even entombed in gallons of flocking and pink.

When we first got married we didn't even discuss the option of a fake tree. No, we just took a week's worth of grocery money and headed to the tree lot on the hill. Some years we bought trees, others we cut our own on some desert property my dad had. But we always had fresh pine for the holidays.

Then we moved to Indiana.

For seven years we made do with a student-housing-mandated-fake-tree, but only barely. Fake trees, it turns out, don't smell like pine. They smell like plastic. All the simmering cinnamon sticks in the world can't make up for it.

So imagine just how thrilled we were last year to make our way back to pine. And not just any old pine, but family-picked-and-cut-pine from the Forest Service property up the canyon. It felt so good to dig out the saw and hatchet again; so good to get up in deep mountain snow.

So good to have a home that smells like Christmas again, and a tradition reborn.

1 day off school

+

5 extra pairs of hands

+

12 bags of apples

=

4 quarts of apple pie filling

+

24 quarts of applesauce ("are we just going to eat applesauce all winter, mom?")

+

2 rounds of dried apples

And also a whole lot of this.

Today I'm cleaning sticky floors and reading a book. And eating applesauce. Naturally.

into october

I unboxed all the quart jars this week. For an entire year they sat huddled in a corner of the basement, empty and (I'm quite sure) thoroughly depressed. A whole year without homemade jam or applesauce; months and months without bottled peaches. I ask you, what is a box of jars without peaches? Oh, how I missed those peaches last winter.

So I unboxed the jars on wednesday and hauled the girls to the home of a friend-of-a-friend. Her apple trees were being cut down, and she was looking for a loving home to send the year's harvest. For the first time in my life, I picked apples at a stoop rather than a stretch. But considering I had three young girls along for the picking, ground level access was a decided boon. Less romantic, to be sure, but much more effective.

All day thursday I made applesauce (with my "helpful" little boy reaching for the knife at every turn -- how does he always know just where the knife is when he can't see onto the counter?!?). Friday I passed and then turned back to a farm stand selling local peaches and tomatoes, and just like that a busy saturday became much busier. Tomato sauce, bottled peaches, apple butter, and peach jam, all in the name of a tasty winter.

Saturday evening our round of fall birthday celebrations belatedly began, complete with requisite piñata in the neighborhood tree.

Happy birthday my boys. Consider the peaches an extra gift.

fishy business

I like to explain my lack of appreciation for fish cuisine by describing the landlocked foothills whereupon I grew up. No sea, no decent seafood, you see. But the fact is that all of my siblings grew up right alongside me on those arid mountains, and most of them love fish. Also, what about trout? The mountain streams and valley lakes were teaming with them. Blaming geography is something of a smokescreen; I don't know where the dislike originated, but I turned my nose to fish almost from the time I could smack fishy lips.

Twenty years after leaving home I'm trying to make amends. All eight of us could use more of the good stuff in fish. Aside from a little tuna here and there, some strawberry-flavored-cod-liver-oil and the random fishy crackers, we've been fish-free too long. But no more.

I've been reading about food quite a lot the past few years ("please don't get her talking about food," my husband says. Ahhh, but you're too late love. I'm already four paragraphs in). I've been reading about fish and thinking about fish and finally decided it was time to cook some and serve it up. So I asked around. Everyone said to go with salmon for an inaugural run.

Even in dim light with a dark plate, I'm sure you can still see just how delicious this salmon looked. Honestly. Even to me. And I'm pleased (and slightly stunned) to report that very nearly the entire family decided it tasted delicious as well. Only the fourteen year-old didn't want seconds. Unbelievable.

So now that we've made it past the novice level with flying colors, the question becomes --

What fish comes next after salmon? And how soon until I let the little girls bring home something with the eyeball still attached? They've been begging, but for the sake of the hesitant older kids -- and my husband -- I have demurred. And also, what is the best way to cook fish? Our neighbors moved and gifted us their grill, which seems like a good fish cooking kind of a place . . .

trailing

Walking, I am continuously discovering, is unbelievably therapeutic. I know this is not new news for many people. I have a friend in Indiana who manages to walk all winter. In the snow and ice. With the kids in tow. I have always been in awe of that, mainly because the effort to get myself from couch to sidewalk with preschoolers in negative degree weather not only seemed insurmountable but slightly heroic. But now that we live in the City of Trails, with scenery that can drag me out of just about any chair, I am learning how wise she is.

We have been out on afternoons and evenings, winter and summer. We walk by the lake and up in the hills and downtown. And I will admit, I am thoroughly converted. There is something about sun and clouds and air and dirt that always manages to clear up and expand my vision. To calm me down. I breathe deeper, my fingers start to tingle. What is it about motion that gets the insides churning? Even my maternal-memory-loss seems to abate slightly while I'm looking down the trail at my string of sassy little blond kids. I bet I could even come up with all of their names and respective birthdays right off the top of my head in such a setting.

The five year-old likes to talk about our Hiking Family, as in "We haven't been on a hike since saturday, and we're a hiking family!" Or "You seem a little grumpy mom. so this hiking family should go on a hike." Sometimes I'm busy or tired and I resist. But she's always wins out in the end.

And in the end, she's always right.

A Hiking Family it is.

Amen, little girl.

well loved: quilts and kids

Not to make anyone jealous (although I realize it may be impossible to avoid on this one), but my mother-in-law makes quilts for all of her grandchildren -- sixteen and counting. And not just any quilts, but unbelievably well-crafted and perfectly chosen quilts. She has a way with colors and patterns, and the patience I have never developed to match corners and stitch in tight lines. These are what most people would call Heirloom Quilts.

Our kids call them "Bama blankies."

When our oldest was born, my mother-in-law chose a deep red color scheme for him, and filled it in with patterns and angles perfectly befitting his alpha-male intensity. My husband and I talked about the blanket and what we should do with it. Heirlooms and kids don't generally go well together (case in point: all of our desks). So we debated: Should we hang it on the wall or bring it within reach of dirty hands and drippy noses?

We chose to bring it down.

The blankets have been dragged around, snorted on, wrestled with, and tied into halters. They have been slept on, sat on, jumped on, and pulled. After a few years the cotton starts to wear. Holes develop, opening circles in the squares. Bindings go next, and then whole sections. That first blankie is down to one remaining square; the second so full of holes the twelve year-old often wears it like a cape, with his arms thrust through the holes. Once in a great while, as I watch them dwindle, I wonder if we made the right choice.

Then I come across pictures like this:

And this:

And I'm reminded about how obviously right it was to let them be loved.

These blankets have produced an heirloom something pristine on the wall never could. They have been surrogate hands and shoulders and open arms of a grandma far away -- fifty miles, and then fifteen hundred miles, and now four hundred and sixty-two miles -- our kids have been able to haul their grandmother around with them.

As I peeked in on the baby tonight, sleeping wrapped in his Bama Blankie like a dog in its bun (a banana in its peel? beans in their tortilla? Clearly I need to work on my metaphors -- all of these images are making me hungry), I thought about fourteen years of wrapped up babies and comforted toddlers and tweens looking for a little reassurance. So many moments in my mind and scattered through my photo library, images of these kids enveloped and warm and safe.

Thank you Mary. You are a wonder.

tiny man

In the spirit of the theme of tiny, born on Tuesday at 8:31 in the morning, here is the newest addition to our family.