Little House on the Suburban Coastal Plain

Rush wants all kinds of things for his train set:  various cranes and trains, a windmill, and Sir Topham Hat (aka The Fat Controller).  He wants Sir Topham Hat “so he can tell Thomas what to do.”  Basically Rush wants every train character he has ever seen in a book or tv show.  Obviously we’re not going to buy all this stuff, but the great thing is that Rush doesn’t really expect it.  All his train pieces have been birthday or Christmas presents, so thankfully it doesn’t cross his mind that we would just go out and get something new.  He decided, mostly on his own, to make the things he wants.

I saw a Barbie Dream House in the Toys R Us ad before Christmas and it was a total disappointment.  Thank God we never had one when I was growing up, even though I wanted it.  My sister and I would take everything (everything including big things, like a record player) off a big bookshelf that was divided into nine big sections.  That bookshelf became a giant apartment complex and/or Barbie mansion.  The Barbie Dream House is to a tenement as that bookshelf is to the Plaza.

So I’m really proud of Rush for using his imagination to add on to his train set.  Our new Sir Topham Hat has a close pin body, a Sharpie on a champagne cork face, and hot glued felt scrap clothes.  He’s now actively admonishing engines for causing confusion and delay.  The popsicle stick and coffee can windmill was less popular, because when I was hot gluing I didn’t realize that the windmill had to spin.  Trent and Rush will have to work on that this weekend.  (Have you ever noticed what a horrible word “gluing” is?  If a gluing was a sea creature, it would attach itself to your leg and suck all the life out of you verrrry slowly.)

Rush and I made Colin and Cranky (cranes) this morning, out of construction paper, cracker boxes and twine.  They look nothing like cranes, but the great thing is, who cares?  Rush is happy to have them and lined them up alongside the wooden track this evening.  I don’t mean happy to have them in a poor-Rush-he-doesn’t-have-any-toys-and-has-to-color-old oatmeal-boxes way, far from it, but happy in a content, imaginative way.  He looks around for Colin and Cranky, by name.

This is all somehow influenced by the Little House on the Prairie books, which I’m rereading for the first time since my mom read them to me in second or third grade.  Somehow thirtyish women get back to these books, because I know I’ve seen detailed references to them on other blogs.  In my case the gateway drug was the Little House children’s books we started accumulating a year or two ago.  After reading the picture books to Rush, I started looking for copies of the series for me.  And here we are.

The tricky part is that these books get into my head and influence my thoughts all day long.  I’m only on By the Banks of Plum Creek and all I do now if compare myself to Caroline Ingalls.  I do not measure up.  With Caroline, dishes get washed right away, chores are done, and certainly children would never be lounging around in their pajamas.  She’s capable and calm and never complains and her children are always in crisply ironed clothes.  Can you even imagine what I would say to Trent if he told me we were leaving our newly build home and freshly planted crops?  I have a shower with hot water and a closet full of dresses and I didn’t have to milk a cow today, yet I wore jeans and had my hair in a ponytail.  The shame!  Either this is a totally unhealthy way of thinking or I’m going to turn it around and become awesome, just like Ma Ingalls.

I’ll try to drag myself back to 2012 for the moment.  At Tate’s last pediatrician check-up, she asked if he could color.  Um…should it have occurred to me to give a 14 month old crayons?  Obviously it wasn’t a big deal either way, because when I said I didn’t know she just moved on with the visit.  But today we learned the answer:  Tate will scribble briefly (3 seconds) then eat the crayons.

Here’s what happened right after train accessory making/crayon eating:  crying, by both boys.  Tate is just taking one nap these days and he wants to take it at 9 AM.  That just cannot happen, so he has some rough patches in the morning.  He’s still adjusting.  I don’t know what was going on with Rush, I think his crying started after I told him we were going outside.  Who can remember?  All I know is that going outside will fix things at least 97% of the time.

I call it a successful morning because I got everyone outside and happy.  Caroline Ingalls once saved her house and family by putting out a wildfire by smacking it with burlap bags soaked in water.  All’s well that ends well.

Brown Paper Packages

Some women go to Cozumel or Napa for girls weekends, we have…the book sale!

For the first time ever we have documentation of the adrenaline flowing as we waited in the foyer for the doors to open on bag day.  It was one of the best bag days ever; even a few hours into the sale the tables were still covered with books, many of them books I wanted to pick up.  I owe that in part to the fact that I didn’t see anyone with scanners mindlessly grabbing books for resale and Kellaura and Amber only reported seeing two.  Historically, I see those people and I want to 1) roll my eyes 2) break their scanners 3) push them, grab their bags, and run them over to the “changed my mind/please put these books back” area.

Amber also documented a packing moment-

Oh how I love bag day.  After hours of wandering tables and selecting books, the moment when I sit down to pack them as tightly and efficiently as possible into my $10 brown bag is one of my very favorite things.  I crammed in 50 books this year, my personal best.

I found things I was looking for (a concordance to keep in my nightstand, a big vegetarian cookbook), children’s books (Standing Up, a fabulous book about a boy learning to pee standing up after being inspired by Manneken Pis in Belgium), a stash of fiction, adventure non-fiction, books the might be helpful in the future (Caring for Box Turtles – how long before Rush and Tate start coming home with turtles they found?) and books that inspire me to be my best self. 

I picked up a SAT prep book that is basically a mini-dictionary of 1,505 words that I should know, but I tend to forget their definitions.  I find it completely hard to remember the definition of adjectives that I see often in print by rarely hear used in conversation, like misanthropic (hating mankind, by the way, if you also have a brain block against that word too.)  It literally took me until last year, and only after looking up the word in the dictionary a thousand times, to remember that the word bucolic means charmingly rural.  Because doesn’t bucolic sound like an infections disease? 

I also fit in a guide to de-cluttering and organizing your home and I read the whole thing in one night.  We’re on our way to a streamlined home!  Full disclosure, I did leave behind a huge book called “How to Organize Everything” because it was going to take up way too much valuable space in my bag.  The book looked really anal anyway and probably wouldn’t have worked for someone who brought home about 70 books over the course of two days.  Or someone who is not even sure exactly how many books she brought home.

I put away the kids books and cookbooks, plus a few more, but I’m keeping most of my books in the brown bag by my bed.  It’s my attempt at both drawing out the excitement and focusing on reading these books, as I’m sure there are still a few unread finds from our first book sale trip in 2007 scattered through our bookshelves.  It’s already been a week, but every time I pull out a new book, it feels new.

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia

I’m just going to title every Easter post with Alleluia, every year.  After burying the Alleluia during Lent, I love saying it again on Easter Sunday.  We really had a wonderful day, with a beautiful church service, friends joining us for lunch, and the afternoon at the park with some of our neighbors.  It was the kind of beautiful day that reminds you why you’re so thankful for Resurrection.

We dyed eggs yesterday…what else is there to say about that?  Rush got it this year and Tate enjoyed eating a bowl of strawberries.

We made a hummingbird cake for today, thanks to my sister’s recipe and Kellaura’s vintage Easter cake toppers.  It was kind of a risky lunch, as we tried out all new recipes on our friends.  Most of it worked, even the Iowa Macaroni and Cheese, which I was doubting last night as I prepared it.  I’m still pretty stuffed from my yearly deviled egg binge.  I probably ate 9 whole eggs today.

The boys got confetti eggs in their Easter baskets, which ended up all over the carpet while we were in the other room.  The great thing about confetti eggs is that I will probably be able to depend on them as a handmade gift in the future as well, when we’re past the days of stuffed bunnies and chicks.

And speaking of bunnies, as we walked up to church this morning there was a bunny on the lawn, just munching away on something.  Happy Easter, little bunny.  It was adorable.

Happy Easter.  Alleluia, Alleluia.

Springtime

A mild winter leading into a warm spring means that the backyard pool made its first appearance last weekend.

Excitement was high, but I’m not sure the boys spent even a total of 5 minutes actually in the pool.  It’s really just a backyard accessory that give them a free pass to run around in bathing suits and get as dirty as they want.  It’s a rite of summer, like popsicles and snow cones.  We just couldn’t make it to the actual summer, so I guess it’s technically a rite of spring.

I’m savoring this shot of Tate’s sweet hair.  I took him yesterday for a short summer haircut, so for now its good-bye wavy locks.  He’s adorable both ways, although currently unrecognizable.

A Good Man, conclusion

Building is only on of Trent’s many talents.  You know what else he is really great at?  Saying yes and trying new things and baking.  Flash back to a few weeks ago, Trent was watching tv on a Sunday afternoon.  I mentioned to him that I saw a recipe on Smitten Kitchen for cheddar, beer, and mustard pull-apart bread that sounded like the perfect Trent recipe.  He made it that night.

Let me reiterate:  The bread is made primarily of cheddar cheese, horseradish mustard, butter, flour, and beer.  Oh yeah.

Here’s a picture of my shoes, which I kicked off as soon as I got home from our neighborhood boot camp and smelled the bread coming out of the oven.  I’m pretty sure I gained back seven times seventy the number of calories I burned that night.

It was insanely, insanely good.  We at almost the whole loaf in one sitting.

Trent may be able to build laundry pedestals and construct paths, but even more wonderful is knowing that he printed this recipe and added it to his cookbook.

A Good Man, continued

In which it gets a little too domestic…

One of my goals for the year was to get the laundry room (closet) spiffed up.  Subconsciously I thought that if the room was nice, laundry would easily get folded and put away.  A painted laundry room would solve the problem of not being able to do laundry any time Tate is napping because the spin cycle wakes him up, right? 

I changed my mind on painting the laundry room when I realized what a giant pain that was going to be.  Also, I’m terrible at painting and Rush’s new-to-him bed is STILL in the garage waiting on another coat, so it was unlikely the laundry room would ever have made its way up the waiting list anyway.  And if at times it takes me two weeks to get folded laundry put away, painting should not be at the top of my priority list.

But Trent held up his end of the deal.  Ta-da, risers!

He was inspired by these plans, but of course made them his own.  He added extra support because, as he kept saying, the washing machine is going to be gyrating up there.  Gyrating?  Trent, this is a family blog.  Let’s keep it clean.  (pun intended)

Trent knocked out that project really quickly, and although it took almost all day to install and I think he started drinking around 2 in the afternoon, now it’s done!  It really has been helpful to have the risers and I’m hopeful that we’ve solved the constant problem of clothes overflowing into the hallway.  If it’s not totally solved, it’s at least vastly improved. 

Along with cleaning the grime and dryer lint out, that was the extent of the remodel.  No detergent decanted into glass jars, but I’m pretty sure life will go on.  Nice laundry rooms are the supermodels of home magazines. Beautiful, but it’s just not realistic for a life that involves a professional grade carpet cleaner and a gallon size bottle of Shout.

A Good Man is Hard to Find*

Trent said I was a little harsh in the construction party post regarding bringing his work home.  Maybe that’s true, but I do know what RFI stands for, and is that really necessary?  Either way, I do think he is a fabulous person and he does some very creative things.  Therefore, consider this post the first in a three part series entitled “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

So after 3 1/2 years of ignoring our front yard, we finally tackled it this year. 

First, the Befores:

That’s September 2011, but really it could be any day.  Until last weekend, the front yard always looked like that.

I just found that picture from Halloween when I was looking for old pics of the front of our house.  It barely shows anything of the house, but Tate’s expression is priceless.  What, does he not like wearing a kangaroo suit in 80 degree weather?

And the Afters:

We spent a long time wondering what to do, when my mom says, “Why don’t you make the flower bed smaller?”  Of course!  So we do need to take the final step of getting sod for the expanse of dirt formerly known as an empty flower bed. 

Our favorite part is the little path, finally solving the problem of getting from the car to the front door.  Previously you had to walk on the grass, which of course meant no grass would grow there.  Trent made the path and I’m impressed.  I’m also amazed that he just figured out how to do it, bought the supplies, and made a great addition.  Plus, he did most of the work in the dark, in the evenings after work.  Well done, Trent.

Now it’s time to see how many of the plants we can keep alive.

 

*Trent and I like to good-naturedly annoy each other by using the phrase “A Good Man is Hard to Find” in reference to the Flannery O’Connor short story of the same title.  Anyone else read that in high school?  Everyone gets murdered at the end?  A good man is apparently very hard to find. 

Trent just corrected me – the Flannery O’Connor short story he really likes to reference to annoy me is “Good Country People.”  He’ll usually refer to someone as “good people” and then I ask if the so-called “good-people” have stolen any prosthetic legs lately. 

The question right now is why is Trent still awake?  It’s after 10.

One day he’s going to take time from his busy schedule of landscaping and talking about work to read those short stories.

You look away for one second-