life lately

Life Lately

I’ve seen words in a few different places the past week that in effect have said: You don’t have to say something wholly original and new and surprising in your writing. You just need to further the conversation.

Caden has been writing books since he was four. Back then I stapled together a couple sheets of construction paper. He was in a major Batman phase and most pages were a drawing of Batman and words to the effect of, “Batman sees a bad guy. Baman wins!” Simple, preschool-ish sentences.

Today he fills notebooks with words. He recently had to write a fable and filled up 10 straight pages in his college-ruled notebook with his tiny, spiky handwriting about the origin of fire. I’m guessing the other kids in his 2nd-grade class wrote a page or two. At home, he’s progressed from construction paper and now insists on 8-10 pages of plain white printer paper, carefully folded in half and creased with my bone folder, then stapled along the edge with exactly five staples. (A child of mine being particular. Imagine!)

His stories now are heavily influenced by his Wings of Fire obsession. (Heads up: affiliate link!) We own every. single. book. Graphic novel, regular chapter book, prequel, and all 16 books in the series. He fills pages with his own dragon-inspired stories, fitting illustrations of dragons in the margins. He stays up I don’t know how late working on them. He says he’s working on a series of 15 right now, because of course he is.

Batman. Dragons. He’s not creating anything fresh and wholly original. He’s letting his mind go, influenced by some of his favorite things. He’s not thinking too hard about any of it. He’s too busy furthering the conversation.

Something to think about, isn’t it?

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Around the Internet

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Eating

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Fun Things

  • I’ve been on a Madewell spree (Um, possibly always?) and am currently snuggling in this sweatshirt. It’s very soft and at least the colors feel like spring, since apparently it will never be warm here ever again. RIP sunshine.

  • I’m re-watching Mad Men, one of my favorite shows of all time, and decided the occasion merited a new mug. Might I recommend to you a purchase based on a beloved fandom? It’s ridiculous the amount of joy it brings me.

  • Sometimes the day’s Wordle isn’t enough for me, and that’s when I check out Letter Boxed. Though it can be depressing when I view the previous day’s answers and discover that letters like COSDYAENR around the square could have been turned into SECONDARY, and what I did was something more like NOD and DONE plus three other words. Oh well.

Life Lately

Happy Almost-April!

That exclamation point is much more optimistic than I actually feel. Really it feels blah. Y’know that whole “in like a lion out like a lamb” thing? We entered March with major lamb energy: there was sunshine! And the snow was melting! And we had a whole week of 40 and 50-degree weather! Now we’re exiting March to snow and wind and cold. I feel like I haven’t been properly warm for a solid two weeks. That lion showed up. Rude.

Just us here. Perpetually indoors and eating snacks. Guess it could be worse.

But! Enough about the weather (sorry, Midwestern hazard). If you follow me on Instagram, you know I went back to work as an interior designer this month for the first time since the twins were born. Though “went back” is actually defined as “sitting at my desk in the corner of our bedroom.” Which honestly, is what I was hoping for. I’m working for my previous employer, but remotely. Same but different.

This has been in the works since late January. (When one of my co-workers called me up and was all, “This is really random but would you ever want to come back and work remotely?” And I was like, “Absolutely yes.”). Despite wanting to go back to work in some capacity for a while, once I had a start date on the calendar, it got real. Did I really want to go back to work? To have my time not be my own? (As though my time was my own with three kids around.) To give up my early retirement? Gah.

But? I’m loving it. It feels good to work with floor plans again. To interpret wants and needs into reality. Even to fight with the design program over dimensions and try to chase down elusive countertop materials again. Things long-forgotten, pushed from my brain by motherhood, have started to come back, like NKBA guidelines and building codes.

It’s a vibe shift but honestly what hasn’t been a vibe shift the past two years? Since 2016? Since having two babies and then another one? You get a vibe shift and you get a vibe shift! Vibe shifts all around.

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Thing I’m Doing

Honestly just adjusting to a new schedule. Sometimes life is like that.

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Around the Internet

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Eating

  • I made this Thai-style basil chicken for the first time in a long time and remembered how delicious it is. Equally great as leftovers.

  • I’m sure I’ve mentioned this pasta with prosciutto and snow peas before, but it’s worth bringing up again. It’s spring on a plate. I don’t like mint so I replace it with basil. Yum.

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Fun Things

Life Lately

I made a Dutch baby for breakfast this weekend. Two out of three kids tried bites and then scrambled for cereal instead. (The remaining child added copious amounts of powdered sugar for it to be deemed edible.) We played board games and ate Thai food and watched TV under soft blankets. We played Wordle. The kids went from laughing together to fighting in 3.2 seconds flat. Yesterday we went to the nearby nature center and rejoiced in the warmth of temperatures over 32-degrees. The sun warmed our cheeks and the kids discarded their jackets and we remembered what it was like to enjoy the outdoors when the wind doesn’t take our breath away.

I listened to The Daily this morning and heard a Ukrainian woman talk about how it was spring there, too, how the sun was out and the birds were singing (Did I mention the birds who sang us to the bus stop this morning?) and she just wanted to enjoy spring and her peaceful life. I felt the parallels in my bones, both of us trying to rejoice in the promise of spring but only one of us consumed by the reality of war in our streets. That we’re different only by virtue of birth, nothing more.

I half-laugh at the warning at the beginning of The Daily episode, “This episode contains strong language.” As if there is any other kind of language for war.

After two years of pandemic, after George Floyd, after January 6th, after Afghanistan, you’d think we’d have learned to live with tragedy. It feels impossible, for the umpteenth time in the past however many years, to hold all of these tensions.

I bought iced coffee this morning on my way to pick up my groceries. I might balk at the increase in prices and yet I can still afford to fill my van with food to feed my family and pay a stupid amount of money for drive-through coffee. Driving home in safety is a given.

And I drove home, the sun shining down bright on another warm, hopeful spring-is-coming sort of day. I try to hold the parallels in my brain. I fling prayers that mostly resemble Anne Lamott’s Help, Thanks, Wow at the sky because I don’t know what else to do. Don’t know how else to hold this tension and bear it.

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Thing I’m Doing

I hate when my “thing” is all “throw money at a problem” and yet that’s really all I have the ability to do. NPR has a roundup of resources that are trustworthy and on the ground in Ukraine should you feel so moved and able to donate.

The other thing I’m doing is holding space for the stories. I can stand in one teeny-tiny, baby iota measure of solidarity with Ukraine by listening to their stories. I have again found The Daily to be a good resource for this.

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Around the Internet

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Eating

  • This was the recipe I used for the Dutch baby. Maybe your kids will appreciate it more than mine.

  • I’m planning to make patty melts this weekend and already looking forward to it. I use this recipe and it is a meaty, cheesy, umami perfection.

  • I had a horrible cold last week which left me with a slight sore throat so I started making vanilla malts with my immersion blender. I used roughly 1 cup milk + 4 generous scoops vanilla ice cream + 4-5 Tbsp. malt powder + a teeny dash of vanilla and it was DELICIOUS. Tyson prefers chocolate so I add 1 Tbsp. cocoa powder for him.

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Fun Things

  • The kids received this version of Ticket to Ride for Christmas. We fell in love with it so I gave what Caden calls “the parent version” to Tyson for Valentine’s Day. I know we’re late to the game (Pun not intended. Ha!) but everyone is right: it’s the best. Cue all of the expansion packs in our future.

  • I already raved about this fleece-lined jumpsuit on Instagram, but here it is again. I promise you need this in your life.

  • We hit up both the Mall of America and Great Wolf Lodge last week to celebrate the kids’ birthdays and it felt like one of the most “normal” things we’ve done in a very long time. Looking for more normal in the very near future.

Life Lately

Even though I thought we were done with the parental-preference phase of things (full of toddler-isms such as “Daddy do!” No! Only Mommy!”), the kids have been back to a big mommy-only phase. They want me to help them with everything from brushing their teeth (me, only me) to playing with them to doing everything involved with their food. It’s not quite so rigid as maybe when they were two. Tyson can put them to bed, for example, and it’s not (usually) the end of the world. They no longer turn into screaming, sobbing puddles on the floor due to the presence of one parent instead of another. Still: the kids want mommy and mommy only. I’m sure this is somehow related to the past two years of *gestures* everything, but heck if I can figure it out.
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It was a cold month here in Minnesota. That sentence might sound redundant, so maybe what I should say is that it was a particularly cold month. We had more subzero January days than not, more days where the windchill had a negative sign in front of it than a positive one. I rather like the cozy months, but even I will admit it can get wearing after a while, when the kids can’t even be outside for recess. Instead of dwelling on the cold, I’ll list the things that saved our sanity this month, which include Wordle, Bluey, hot chocolate, wearing sweatsuits on repeat, family games, and making all the soups, stews and pastas. (Seriously, whoever decided that January was a great month to market You Should Begin All the Diets did not live in Minnesota.)
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I learned, again, that if we just sit down and talk to the kids, they’re…really good. We had a Family Meeting over the weekend to remind them of our morning rules: 1. No coming out of your room until 6:30 and 2. Play quietly until Mommy and Daddy are out of bed. Being blessed with Morning Kids™ who are frequently awake before 6:00, we’d fallen into a cycle where Tyson and I were woken up by what sounded like an entire Marvel movie breaking out in the hallway or kids barging in with a barrage of questions in our still-dark room. Though the final straw was Nolan’s Saturday morning 4:45 call for help because he “couldn’t reach” his water bottle and he “didn’t want to get up,” after which neither Tyson nor I fell back asleep. But after a single family meeting Saturday night to discuss, we’ve had two perfect back-to-back mornings (fingers crossed, throws salt over shoulder, steps over all sidewalk cracks, makes sign of the cross) which leaves me wondering why we didn’t just talk to them sooner.
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If there are any other words to sum up the month for parents, it seems to be these lyrics from Encanto: “...see if she can handle every family burden/Watch as she buckles and bends but never breaks/No mistakes just/Pressure like a grip, grip, grip and it won’t let go, woah/Pressure like a tick, tick, tick ‘til it’s ready to blow/…Who I am if I don’t have what it takes?/No mistakes/Just pressure.” And not just because those lyrics are living on repeat in all of our brains right now. (Love you, LMM, but could you make some songs that just aren’t quite as catchy?) Still, we made it through January. I think I spy hope ahead, in the form of warmer temperatures, the end of distance learning (for those who were back in that hellscape), and quieter mornings.

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Thing I’m Doing

Inspired by last Tuesday’s outside of politics conversation on Pantsuit Politics, I thought I’d share how I’m involved at the kid's’ school. Every Thursday afternoon, I volunteer in the workroom for about 2-4 hours where I run copies, put together projects (soooo many Kindergarten projects), and other classroom organization-type things for whoever needs it. I don’t know why I don’t talk about it much—I did this when Caden and Brooklyn started Kindergarten (though in-school volunteers were on pause for most of the pandemic)—but it’s a pretty big anchor in my week. I’ve also helped in the cafeteria and am signed up to staff the book fair in a few weeks. It’s a small thing for me to do yet the gratitude from the staff is enormous.

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Around the Internet

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Eating

With those subzero temps, I’ve been making alllllllllll the comfort foods:

  • I’ve made this soup three times in the past two months. I recommend adding an extra bell pepper and cooking the tortellini separately and adding it as needed so it doesn’t get mushy.

  • These red curried lentils but I used an entire can of full-fat (urgh, please don’t use the “light” stuff) coconut milk. I kept an eye on it as it simmered and added more coconut milk as needed to keep it more soup-y.

  • I’ve tried a few Swedish meatball recipes before but this one is my favorite. It comes together pretty fast when you buy the frozen Swedish meatballs from Target. Like IKEA…but better.

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Fun Things

  • Speaking of cozy, my birthday gift to myself was a new sweatsuit. Enter this sweatshirt and these sweatpants.

  • After twelve too many splashes and grease stains, this apron is now saving my clothes.

  • These bins now live in my pantry to organize snacks and my life feels (almost) complete.

  • Starting a new hashtag on Instagram. Would love to see you join in!

Life Lately

November is a whiplash of holidays. We usher in the month with a candy hangover and carved pumpkins on our porches and end with twinkle lights, Santa Clauses, and all things glitter. In-between, there are earth-toned pumpkins, corn stalks, and turkeys. We rotate through eating Kit Kats and Sour Patch Kids to a feast of fourteen separate dishes to eyeing up peppermint cookies and gingerbread men.

Phew.

I feel stuck in the pumpkin-ish phase of things. We put up our tree over the weekend but I’m worried there won’t be snow for Christmas. It feels impossible, when I look out our windows to the brownish grass outside, that we’re nearly a week past Thanksgiving. The lights glimmer at me from the living room, determined to lend their cheer whatever the weather.

I know many of my friends live in places where not having snow is the norm, where Christmases consist of 70 degrees and palm trees, or at least green grass. But I’m a born-and-bred Minnesotan. To not have snow yet, not even in the extended two-week forecast, makes it feel like we’ve jumped the gun, like we’re closer to Christmas in July than December 25th.

We almost didn’t have snow last year, I remember. I remember because it felt almost unbearable, on top of everything else 2020 dumped on us, to not have snow for Christmas. A brownish Christmas felt like the ultimate insult.

It arrived, unexpectedly, on Christmas Eve. We weren’t supposed to have any snow, or maybe just a dusting, until a storm moved further south than they thought or lasted hours longer than they predicted and so we ended up with a properly white Christmas, after all. I remember how ridiculously grateful I felt for the swirling snowflakes outside. I remember making appetizers in the kitchen while playing Christmas music and it finally felt acceptable. How I felt, for really the first time last year, in any sort of Christmas spirit at all.

This year, though, I still feel like the pre-Christmas Eve me of 2020. Despite trading in our pumpkins and leaves for twinkling lights and all things red and green, I can hardly wrap my head around the month of December. Not yet. Of course the lack of snow just feels like a final insult. Again.

I was reading through Sarah Bessey’s Advent guide on Sunday where she wrote, “In these days, celebration can seem callous and uncaring, if not outright impossible. But here’s the thing, my friend: we enter into Advent now precisely because we are paying attention. It’s because everything hurts that we prepare for Advent.”

I wouldn’t say everything hurts, not exactly, not for me this year. The shock of 2020 has worn off, or at least softened around the edges. 2022 looms, even as it seems impossible that we’ve lived through not only all of 2020 but also 2021. March 2020 still feels thisclose, despite being almost two years past on the calendar. And yet the kids will be officially fully vaccinated as of New Year’s Eve, exactly two weeks past their last dose. Miracle of miracles. We’ll have much to toast to that night.

We enter into December, into Advent, because we’re paying attention. We just spent a holiday giving thanks: for family, for friends, for food, for those vaccines, and now we wait in hope. For more light in the world. For healing for our planet. For stacks of presents from pages and pages of lists and catalogues, if you’re my kids. As for me? I’ll keep hoping for that snow.

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Action Item

I think the best action item of all for December is rest. There are a million people and organizations vying for your money, time, and talent right now. You don’t need me to write up yet another one. Give what and if you can, and then rest. Breathe. It’s been a long couple of years.

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Around the Internet

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Eating

  • These really are the best chocolate cookies. I halved the batch which made more than enough for us (between 15-18 fairly large cookies), but would use the amounts given to bake enough for holiday gifting.

  • I’m pretty sure I sang the praises of this Coconut Chicken Curry last year, but since I’ve made it twice this past month, I’m here to do it again.

  • This is one of my go-to pastas. I can’t eat shrimp, but sub in 1/2 lb. of Italian sausage instead. The sauce is DIVINE. Add in ALL the basil and top with shredded parm. It’s 10:32 in the morning and my mouth is watering.

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Fun Things

  • I’ve been loving a dab of Cloud Paint on my cheeks.

  • Sushi Go! has been our family game of choice lately. We are obsessed.

  • I wore these pants for Thanksgiving and strongly approve. They feel like sweatpants but are acceptable in public and even for holidays. Elastic waists forever.

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See you in 2022, or very close to it. Hopefully with snow.