It is both very chic and very cliche to comment on how fast the year has gone, once we hit mid-November, right? Today I made a menu for Thanksgiving and I couldn’t quite comprehend what I was doing. I believe my mind stopped calculating the passage of time around late August–I couldn’t explain to you why that happened, only that if you asked me when Halloween was, I would tell you it was quite a number of weeks away yet. Of course here we are barreling on towards Christmas, and today I made a new section in my bullet journal labeled Holidays, hoping to find myself ahead of the game, for once! We’ve started stringing garlands of oranges, cranberries and cinnamon, though I have personally banned myself from Christmas music until after Thanksgiving and have attempted to lobby for no tree until Christmas Eve, which will likely will not happen. I really love the Christmas season and I am always nervous about wearing it out by starting in on it too early.
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angry elvie
Before you’re a parent, a crying kid is just a crying kid.
Then you have your own, and suddenly you become a true connoisseur of crying. You know the way they cry when they’re hungry. That peculiar coughing cry when they’re overtired. The way they sound when they’ve woken early from a nap and won’t be going back to sleep, and the way they sound when they probably will. The scared cry, the hurt cry, the angry cry. That last one is the one I’m thinking about tonight.
The King of Pickles
“Mama…” Ephraim says quietly as he bends towards me.
We’re eating lunch: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, goldfish crackers, cherry tomatoes picked from our hanging baskets, and sweet pickles.
Ephraim’s just brought three or four of the latter from their bowl to his plate when he leans in the direction of my chair and whispers solemnly, seriously. “Mama,” he begins again. “Would you call me…The King of Pickles?”
It’s the strangest thing I’ve been asked all day.
the grove
I made this little map of Janderhil a few weeks ago. If you’ll notice the crinkle in the lower right corner, you’ll see where Clive left his mark while perusing the map. It’s not too big of a deal, since things have changed on the property and I have to make a new map, anyway. I have to add Fairweather Pond (or the place where Fairweather Pond appears after rainstorms), I have to move the blueberry bushes (they’re not in that trough anymore), and I have to add the trees we’ve planted.
unremarkable
the honey store
Saturday was a day for a special errand–and because we’ve been reading a book about a similar errand over and over recently, let me describe said errand thusly:
We ate our honey
We ate a lot
We had no honey
In our honey pot.
singing alto
It was a half-past four when Elvie woke this morning, grumbling and complaining after having flipped herself over to her back (she hates that, but won’t stop doing it.) I turned on the lamp against the darkness and went to get her from her crib. It seems early, but it’s only half an hour earlier than when I want her to get up and not so early to feed her and put her back to bed.
I sat cross-legged on my bed while I fed her, and once my eyes stopped closing of their own accord, I picked up the devotional that was sitting on the bedside table. It was by Charles Spurgeon and part of a two-book set, one book having readings for morning and the other having readings for evening. And before I sound too holy, let me say that this was the evening book I was about to read, and I did so because I hadn’t been keeping up with reading the evenings ones, and I also wasn’t exactly sure where the morning book was... But I’m trying not to look at my phone first thing in the morning, and the devotional was available, so I picked it up and turned to the entry for today. Well, for this evening, anyway.
the lure of slow living
On Christmas morning, we broke my parents’ microwave.
It was a Christmas brunch, and there was a whole lot of bacon to cook. So we did it in the microwave–batch after batch after batch, cycle after cycle, until suddenly there was a horrible smell of burning plastic and a swirl of smoke and the machine was quickly ejected from the festivities to sit forlornly on the carport, where we watched warily to see if it would burst into flames or not. (It didn’t.)
It was an old microwave–I can say this because appliances age much more quickly these days than they used to–and no one was really surprised or deterred by its sudden demise. And we had done without a microwave for years when I was growing up, so no one was in a hurry to replace it, either. So we left it outside and moved our bacon-making to the stovetop.
morning people (and thoughts on value)
There was a grump in the house this morning.
I really consider myself a morning person. My husband says I’m not, because I am not a chipper morning person–the type that you usually think of that fits the stereotype of someone who loves mornings. I do not jump out of bed at daybreak with a song on my lips. I don’t really jump out of bed at all, and not just because it’s sort of difficult with an almost-third-trimester belly. I am just not a break-of-dawn bed jumper. But I love the morning; it’s my favorite time of day. I just like mornings to be very, very quiet.
storytime [with boys]
We’re gathered around the breakfast table when Clive sets down his cup and asks, “Mama, you tell me a stowwy ’bout Ephraim looses his hair? I love dat stowwy.”
I can’t recall ever telling a story with that particular plotline, but since he has asked so sincerely, I set my coffee aside and begin:
“Once upon a time, Ephraim had a full head of hair. But one day, when he was playing outside, he sneezed. And all of his hair fell out! [The boys giggle] And all of the birds outside came to get his hair to use in their nests…”
Ephraim interrupts, here. “But suddenly–Ephraim ATE one of the baby birdies!” Clive cackles, and Anselm laughs because everyone else is laughing. Ephraim continues, “And he ate one of the mommy birds, too!”
I sit for a second in stunned silence, because that is certainly not the ending I had in mind for either the sweet little nest-building birdies or my now-bald Story Son; I’m unsure how to continue, though I feel like the turn of events surely must be addressed.
Fortunately, Jeremy came to my rescue. “Well, son,” he says nonchalantly, “Did you cook the birds first?”
moments
I put chocolate chips on my shopping list a few weeks ago. It was my intention to make them with Ephraim, who is seriously interested in helping in the kitchen right now.
Yesterday, while the younger boys napped, we got started. I measured out ingredients for him to pour into the mixer, one by one. (next time I’ll let him take on that part, too). He broke the eggs into the mixture, and we only lost one tiny piece of eggshell which I couldn’t dig out.
I had wanted to take pictures of the whole thing, mostly because I very rarely am able to get pictures of my firstborn at all, but I needed to closely supervise the process and really didn’t have a chance to take the camera out. I figured that was OK, that there would be more cookie-making in the future, and that I could document then.
There is a dogma circulating the parenting world that we are too quick to document, instagram, photograph or what-have-you a moment that we should instead just sit back and soak in, enjoy. I disagree with this hypothesis. Of course, as the cliche goes, there must be a balance–but there have been many, many moments that I reached for my camera but hesitated, and decided to “soak in the moment” instead, and do you know what happened? I forgot it. I remember the decision not to document, but that’s all I can recall of that fleeting experience.
Of course, let us be wise; let us not allow our children to go their whole lives seeing us only behind a phone or camera. But I have never looked at a photograph a week, month, year after it was taken and thought, “Man, I wish I hadn’t taken the time to take that picture.” Instead, I almost always am surprised at how much I have forgotten. My days here fly by like the tornados that Ephraim is currently obsessed with.
So I missed the making of the cookies, but today when we sat down to enjoy them, I photographed it. Not much–I only took these pictures before sitting down and having a cookie myself. But I wanted to remember it–being able to compliment Ephraim on a job well done. His serving his two brothers their cookies before sitting down to receive one himself. Anselm wearing almost as much cookie as he got in his mouth. Clive thinking he is smiling for the camera when he actually isn’t. Today they were 4, 3, and eighteen months. Today is almost gone. This memory will remain.