Holly Nils Williams
December 11, 2013
4:02 PM
8 lb, 8 oz
Holly is a joy, a delight, a wonderful baby and we love her a million times infinity times a brazillion times pi plus infinity. Rush and Tate are fabulous big brothers, showering her with plenty of hugs and kisses. We are so excited about the newest member of our family and we are also crazy for not being asleep right now. Good night!
It isn’t all just crossword puzzles while waiting for the baby to arrive. I’ve also been trying to recreate this incredible Batman mask.
It’s more difficult than it looks.
So this year, new plan: Advent Calendar, Take Four. The last thing in the world these kids need is more candy and small, cheap toys and the last thing that I need is to plan out every holiday event to fit a note into a calendar that I’m required to keep forever because I sewed on all those sequins. Instead of putting anything in the pockets, we added a sequined star that the boys can move to a new pocket every day. The baby Jesus from our nativity scene is in pocket 24. When they find him, he’ll head to the stable on Christmas Eve, because there was no room for them in the inn. Rejoice, rejoice!
So far, so good, moving on with life. This is already working better than previous years. One person moves the star in the morning, the other gets to blow out the candle on the Advent wreath at dinner. No tears thus far and it’s already December 2!
I love December.
A quick way to get your head bitten off around here, as Trent discovered last night, is to ask me the question, “What’s up with all the crossword puzzles?” What’s up is that I’m waiting for this baby to arrive!
Most craftiness that takes place around here is fueled primarily by one way of looking at things: thrift. Growing up, we were trained by my mother to look at everything with possibilities. When we opened a new pack of Fruit of the Loom underwear, we didn’t just toss out the piece of cardboard that the underwear was folded around. We looked at the cardboard first and went, what could we used this perfectly rectangular piece of cardboard for…?
Having three children, limited funds, and CONSTANT school projects, my mom really helped us think creatively. I remember binding a poetry collection with a placemat that we cut in half and some metal rings, probably because it was just too expensive to buy a new binders for every project. The book ended up being really cool and much more interesting than a generic binder.
Unfortunately, the dark side of any craftiness is the desire to just get the thing finished already. Which is why I took some of the tiniest bits of piecing I have ever done, and haphazardly machine quilted stripes across the whole thing, instead of taking the time to finish the project in a way that would, I don’t know, look nice.
A sewing machine cover seemed like a waste of time, until I had two boys who would, on a whim, pull out all my thread or draw on my sewing machine with Sharpie when I wasn’t in the room. It made sense to add a layer of protection for times when I didn’t want to pack up my machine in its case.
Then I sewed the binding on by machine instead of hand, which I know I’m terrible at.
Looks awesome.
The highlight is the back: chain bikes.
The good news is that the thrifty mindset is here to stay, and the FINISH IT ALREADY! can be improved upon, evidenced by the fact that I at the very least recognize that sewing is 90% ironing. Lesson learned from this project that finished up terribly: keep fighting the quick finish.
In the cruel hours of pregnancy insomnia, I’ve been trying to figure out the most accurate natural disaster metaphor to illustrate preparing for and having a baby. It’s not a tornado or an earthquake due to the lead time that you get during pregnancy. Also, in the case of an earthquake, it’s not something that I’m so afraid of that I won’t book a plane ticket to California. A hurricane is a closer fit, because there is warning and time to empty out your freezer (or in this case, fill it). But nothing about clearing out tree branches or sitting on the porch waiting for the electricity to come back on really works, except for the excessive sweating.
Then I realized: having a baby isn’t a hurricane when you live an hour from the coast. It’s a hurricane when you live right on the beach, the dirty side is going to pass right over your house, and you choose not to evacuate.
Right now I’m the guy on the news with a cigarette and a bag of Tostitos, saying, “It’s not my first hurricane and it probably won’t be my last.” Soon I’m going to be the person who is terrified and strapping my self to an Igloo ice chest at two in the morning to try to stay afloat while the roof is ripped off my house and water simultaneously rises up through the floor. At some point you’ll see me back on the news, disheveled, drinking a beer (it’s good for your milk supply!) and mostly incoherent. The kindhearted will bring food, bags of ice, and a huge box of second-hand shoes that I’ll have to deal with at some point. A few months later, I’ll be scrubbing the mold out of my shower, because while the disaster relief crew that brings your children stuffed animals showed up to help, the one who scrubs bathroom mold went to the bigger city with better press coverage.
A year or two later, when we’ve rebuilt our home, the details of the hurricane will be a distant memory, worth it because we get to live at the beach.
While spending the better part of the afternoon on the couch, I kept thinking, why am I so tired? I should get up and do something. Then all of a sudden I remembered, ah yes, I’m nine months pregnant. Thank God for a well worn couch and teenage dystopian fiction.
Interesting that when you start searching Google for Brazoria County Library, Brazoria County Jail comes up first every single time. Hopefully that’s alphabetical and not the state of society.
When I was in college and working at a summer camp, I ate lunch one day with one of the wranglers. Ever since that day, I periodically think of him in terms of The Salad Award, meaning that I mentally assign him The Salad Award for his use of the camp salad bar. His trip to the salad bar produced a salad consisting of croutons, cheddar cheese, and ranch dressing. Done. If you’re picturing that on top of lettuce, don’t. Three ingredients: croutons, cheese, ranch.
That story is not related to anything. It was just an amazing salad.
Kate recently posted something on facebook about the challenges of trying to learn some pi related formula in order to sew a witch’s hat for Halloween. I feel that I generally run about 2 years behind Kate, so if she’s wearing army pants and flip flops today, she looks great and too cool for me. Then in two years, I’ll finally get army pants and flip flops. But at this very moment, I’m right with her on the math.
Right now, the complicated math behind even the most seemingly basic sewing or craft project is quite possibly going to make my brain explode. I can’t figure out what the problem is, because I’m pretty sure I used to be good at math. Brain, stop trying to impress Aaron Samuels and figure out how to allow for seam allowances when trying to sew two triangles from a square! With a quick brush up, I could probably do derivatives today, but calculus is probably the most useless thing I learned in school. Who is using that- astronauts? Where are you now geometry?
Speaking of astronauts, I finally made it to the International Quilt Festival Houston. Every year I vow to go at all costs, then every year something comes up that trumps it, my niece’s baptism or a Guy Fawkes party. This year was a long, clear Saturday morning all to myself. A highlight of the day was picking up information about the quilt block challenge with Astronaut Karen Nyberg, currently on the space station, who made a star quilt block in space. The challenge is for anyone else to make a star themed quilt block to send in to be joined together for a huge (or many huge) star themed quilt for next year’s quilt festival. You had me at astronaut.
My square was inspired by Hubble telescope photographs, meaning that I looked at some photos before digging into my scraps. Photos of space are God’s way of hinting that when we die and pass on, we’re going to look around at whatever’s next and go, I was way off.
Last night I commented to Trent (measure carefully at least twice, cut once) that it must be so interesting to start a project with a visual goal in mind. I (eyeball it, cut four times, use a seam ripper, cut three more times) start all my projects wondering how it’s all going to turn out in the end. I thought that star on the quilt block was going to be eight of the nine and a half inches. Sewing math strikes again.
When school supplies were on sale, regular Crayola markers were $1/box and washable Crayola markers were substantially more, possibly $2.50? Obviously, go for the regular markers.
It’s hard to make a clear ‘don’t ever do this again’ point when you can’t stop laughing. There are so many bigger messes that could have happened. I’ll take marker faces over a spilled glass of milk almost any day.
Recently at church there was a sermon about not loving things, but loving people and using things. The priest talked about that the instant that we die, our possessions become worthless. It’s only the connection of an item to a person that gives it any importance.
When my mom and my aunt were getting my grandparents’ house ready for an estate sale a few years ago, I went by their house to pick out something to take home. I was shocked to find the sheets that I always slept on when I spent the night at their house folded in the bathroom closet and ready to be sold. (I can smell the clean, soapy, hint-of-mothballs smell of that bathroom right now. I wish I had a Dixie cup full of water to drink, then maybe I could get my hair tangled around and stuck in a round brush.) They were just sheets to my mom and aunt, but they were meaningful to me because of my memories connecting them to my grandparents.
We’ve been using the pillowcases for awhile, but the sheets have been waiting in the closet. They finally made it into a quilt, some of the fitted sheet pieced into the top, the flat sheet for the backing.
I finally remembered that for my first quilt, I marked the pieces with masking tape to keep myself organized while piecing. Rush and Tate were happy to remove all the tape and stick it all over their clothes once the piecing was complete.
And now I’m free from the sewing machine, released to months of hand quilting, better known as ‘hours of guilt free tv watching.’
I am genuinely surprised every single time I finish a project, which I trace back to the cross stitch I started in elementary school and never finished. My mom bought two cross stitches, one each for my sister and me to make for our grandmothers. Casey finished hers and continued on to become a successful embroiderer. Mine floated through my dresser drawers, half finished and ignored, for years.
The curse has lifted, I’m free: I started and finished a cross stitch, un-ironed in the photo to prove to my mom that, yes, I did use an embroidery hoop.
Trent and I have been watching Breaking Bad in its entirety and I like the drug underworld-cross stitch juxtaposition. I’m looking at an embroidery hoop/thread/needle, but hearing Gus tell Walt he’s going to kill his entire family. It works to both tone down the show and give an edginess to the needlework.
The trick to this new hobby is that any kit I have found for a reasonable cost looks like it was designed in 1989 and designing my own patterns on graph paper is surprisingly much more difficult than one would expect. The library, as usual, came through with a book of 500 patterns, alphabets, borders, animals and such, which was just the help I needed to actually design a pattern on graph paper.
Now that I’ve conquered completing a cross stitch, Trent has proposed a new challenge.
Eat this whole bag-
I wish.
There’s a strange worry in my subconscious that if I wait until too close to Halloween to buy candy, the stores will sell out and we will have to keep our porch light off. A simple solution is to buy the candy early in October. Trent was with me when I picked up the candy on Saturday and seems to think I’m going to start sneaking candy. He pretty much dared me not to open the bag- dare grudgingly accepted.
18 days and counting on the cold that waxes and wanes but has yet to go away. I’m helping my battered immune system along with a steady diet of Taco Bell, Whataburger, and occasionally a trip to Burger King.
The punch line to the following story has been a phrase in useful rotation for so many circumstances since I first heard it. A friend of my sister had a very young, probably just past newborn, baby. Some Jim Rush sort of character was holding the baby at their house while drinking a milk shake, and eventually commented, “This baby sure likes milkshakes!”
This baby sure likes milkshakes! Who are you, milkshake drinking baby?
Finally, an excuse to buy some of that shiny, silky fabric from the fabric store- not for dresses, but for Batman capes!
The beauty and reality of the handmade: Regardless of what you may think you’re making, you’re really just working on the world’s lushest cat bed.
Somewhere, someone has been cursing my name because he wanted to start a blog called Jet and Bean, but every time he tried for the name, google shot it back as already taken. But when he would check jetandbean.blogspot, those people hadn’t even updated it five months. THE NERVE.
So I got pregnant and tired and started sleeping 12 hours a night. Everything non-essential had to go. Then I started to feel better, but had to face the shambles of a home that had been neglected for three-plus months. Then after the house started coming back into focus, I realized that if I never got on the computer, it could stay reasonably clean and tidy.
If I wanted a more accurate documentation of our life for the past few months, I could reminisce about Rush learning to swim and Tate being a two year old with a broken leg in August and hiking pregnant with two children by myself when Trent got food poisoning on vacation. I could take some pictures of the quilt I started making with sheets from the 1960’s that I got from my grandparents’ house after my grandpa died and talk about how I started knitting again after giving away all my knitting supplies a year or so ago because I’m terrible at knitting, but it’s just sooo convienient [to make things that people can use 3 or 4 days out of the year.] Maybe some first day of school or soccer game or ultrasound photos could be posted.
It’s easier to just summarize everything with the one phrase that really captures our family right now: “Penis is a private part and Venus is a planet.”
That’s what Rush and Tate say at least a few times every day, brought on by my insistence that they stop saying penis just to make each other laugh. So now they say Venus and laugh and laugh and then give me that statement. I kind of thought those kind of jokes would show up later, like closer to age 10 or 12…?
Now that we’re all caught up on the Williams family, here’s what’s happening Today:
(Not this picture by the way, all these pics are from our vacation back in July.)
It’s quiet upstairs so there’s a good chance both boys are napping. They are funny and growing and most definitely little kids and not babies. There’s definitely a new independence and self-sufficiency for both of them.
I’ve been making cinnamon raisin bread, so I’m about to go eat another piece of that. As Trent would say, “Your doctor did tell you to gain more weight though, so you’re okay.” It’s a good husband who will turn your OB’s words around on you at 9 PM when you’re shoving buttered sugar bread into your already-reached-the-allotted-pregnancy-weight-gain-with-three-months-to-go cake hole.
Approximately eight years ago, in our apartment off Buffalo Speedway, Trent and I bought two of IKEA’s least expensive floor lamps. A few weeks ago, one of them finally gave out and today the second one followed it. Both times I was sufficiently exasperated at the poor boys for rough-housing the lamp over into the window where it disconnected from its base, because agh, we bought that for twelve dollars in 2005 and now it’s broken forever! And we’ll probably be forced to buy an end table!
I’m coming around to a peaceful state as our material possessions systematically fall apart, because hopefully our home, as it gets more crowded and shabby, will start to resemble The Burrow. (!)
All my pregnant brain is letting me read is Harry Potter. Over and over.
And now time for the cinnamon raisin bread, or possibly the last two waffles from the freezer. This baby isn’t going to reach 10 pounds on its own.
April is National Poetry Month, so the library is sponsoring Game of Tomes, where you stack a pile of books so that their title makes a poem when you read it top to bottom.
I never actually got that picture to the library- oh well.
If you ever wonder why this blog doesn’t get updated, it’s because this is my current life process with computers/social media:
Step 1- Check e-mail on phone maybe every day, maybe every two or three days. Spend most of the time deleting junk e-mails from The City of Houston (We don’t even live in your county, people!). It’s faster to hit “delete” than to hit “unsubscribe.”
Step 2- Get on the computer once a week to type any longish e-mail replies. Twitter? Instagram? Facebook? Whatever else the kids are doing these days? Nope, I have more pressing online issues. Spend the rest of the time looking at pictures of William and Kate.
Step 3- Consider how much time it would take to get pictures from the camera or my phone to the computer. Decide to turn off the computer and move on with my day.
If some magical, non-hacker, person can get our Saturn V Rocket pictures off my phone and onto the computer, I could probably produce a real post. Trent’s probably the only person who falls into that category right now. Until that happens, I’m off to get a snack.
The problem with democracy is that everyone gets a vote, regardless of if you have any idea what you are talking about. Everyone getting a vote is also the beauty of democracy, but not the beauty of the internet. The top Google search results for any question is a list of forums and no one ever has a clue what they’re talking about. I might type in “What happens if you don’t remove a splinter?” and the answer is always a forum where the first person to answer, without a doubt, starts her answer with “Honey,” then gives the most dramatic answer possible. “Honey, you better save yourself a lot of pain and suffering and head straight to the emergency room to let a surgeon remove that splinter.”
Fun fact: If you have a splinter that you can’t get out, you can leave it alone for a few weeks and your body might magically push it to the surface where it will fall out.
I was making cookies earlier and remembered that we were out of vanilla extract. “Honey, you better stop what you’re doing right now and head straight to the grocery store, because there is nothing that will substitute for vanilla extract in a chocolate chip cookie.” Correction internet: Disaronno can be substituted for vanilla extract, submitted by I'm Going to Eat All These Before My Children Wake Up Test Kitchens.
Photo caption- Statler and Waldorf, doing what they do best: swinging and bickering and plotting the demise of any kid who messes with them.
It’s probably okay to eat that whole batch of cookies, because I made up the fact to post on an internet forum that being outside burns more calories than being inside, honey. We have been outside a lot, 2 1/2 hours in the cul-de-sac this morning alone, because I want to start the weekend with a clean house. A clean house means no one is in it.
Yesterday we reached a milestone in the American parent/child relationship. I tried to buy Rush a regular pair of tennis shoes and he refused to try them on, searching and searching the racks for a cooler pair. Rush Williams, age 4.
To kick off your weekend, please visit the world’s greatest blog, Becoming Leona. It’s hot off the presses and if there were ever a good thing to jump on early, it’s reading that.
