David’s been helping Nathaniel practice how to walk. Nathaniel likes to stand up but he’s not taking any steps alone just yet. David loves practicing with him. And so does Nathaniel. Let’s see when he’ll actually walk.
And then they both stop and start playing. And laughing.
He’s still sick and has a fully congested nose. It’s painful to watch. But he’s been in good humors because he’s the best baby on earth.
Since he woke up with a fever yesterday, I took Nathaniel to the doctor tonight and thankfully he has no ear infection or any other kind. He’s just sick the poor little boy.
I was quite productive today. I have a lot more work but it’s actually getting done. It helps to have two separate computer as it turns out because when I am on the work machine, I have nothing personal there and no way to waste time. It’s pretty amazing. I am still feeling a bit unmotivated and I am still making plans in my head but no actual art just yet. I am hoping the drive will come soon.
I haven’t yet done any of my silliness assignments either. I think it’s important to start a class when it actually starts or it throws me off. So I need to sit and catch up on this one.
Note to Self:
As I’ve noticed lately, it takes a while to get back into routine. The routine of life. The routine of art. Until about ten days ago, I was making some form of art daily and I was really enjoying it. I’ve made plans to continue that but I have yet to sit down and actually do it. Same goes for reading. When I read regularly, I seem to crave it more. I want to do it. I look forward to it. Yet when I don’t, I can go for days and never even think of it. I guess this is how people who exercise must feel. The more you do it, the more you crave it. So I need to find a way to get back on the treadmill of art. (Ugh that actually sounds boring but you know what I mean.) Getting up at 5am doesn’t help much but still it’s no excuse. I am confident that once I start again, I won’t want to stop.
Three Things I’m Grateful For:
1. I am so thankful that Nathaniel doesn’t have another ear infection. So thankful.
2. I am thankful for the simple things today. For routine. For coffee. For time with my kids laughing. For sunshine.
3. I am thankful that my family is having a good time in Disney World. I am sad I am not there with them but so thankful that they are enjoying each other’s company.
Two Things David’s Grateful For:
1. Getting to build a big fort with the building blocks he got as a baby
2. Getting to play on Mommy’s phone at the doctor’s
Since yesterday was Easter, we decided it would be fun to paint some eggs. I didn’t have white eggs or dye. I hadn’t really prepared well for this. So I improvised.
I took some of the eggs that were about the go bad, emptied them out and David picked some paint colors he liked.
We took turns painting a base coat.
Several of the colors he picked were shiny and translucent so they didn’t paint all that well but he didn’t care. We then made circles with the top of his markers and dots with the back of the paint brush.
So we ended up with these two.
And these two.
All in all, it was quick and fun and we both enjoyed ourselves quite a lot. Next year, I will be more prepared.
Wanted to play around a bit today.
Despite the fact that I’m Jewish, we celebrate Easter in this house. For years it’s been a lot of fun for David and we wanted Nathaniel to have a ton of fun, too. They woke up early in the morning so we decided to save the egg hunting until after Nathaniel’s nap. As it turned out, he took a 3-hour nap and then woke up with a 102 fever. (Which likely means he has another ear infection I’m guessing….) I picked him up, nursed him, gave him some medicine and brought him downstairs for some hunting.
I’d setup the plastic eggs so the yellow and orange ones are for Nathaniel and the rest are for David. After we put him down, Nathaniel was so tired that he just sat there. Not sure what was going on.
Not David, of course. He knew exactly what this was about.
He was so excited and took less than 8 minutes to find all 15 eggs.
Jake tried to encourage Nathaniel by showing him what was inside his eggs.
He ate them just fine.
But he still wouldn’t crawl and get them. So David, once he’d picked up all of his eggs, picked all of Nathaniel’s too and opened them up for him.
Nathaniel really just sat there, looking tired and a bit out of it. But still incredibly cute.
The two boys surrounded him and made sure he was well taken care of. And so ended his first Easter.
A little while later, he felt much better and by bedtime he was giggling up a storm. David and I would “boo” and he’d giggle and giggle; it’s incredibly joyful to hear a little baby giggle.
As promised, I didn’t do a thing all weekend. I finished my book, started another, made some plans for the week, played with my kids, and today we watched a movie, did some crafts and that was about it. Just a fantastically relaxing weekend. I am looking forward to doing some art and catching up on my todo lists this week. Let’s hope it’s a productive one.
Oh, and, have to go to the doctor again tomorrow for the little boy 🙁 I don’t know what’s going on with him, I hope he’s ok.
Note to Self:
There was a moment today when all four of us were sitting on the couch, watching a movie on Jake’s computer. It wasn’t an amazing movie or anything but just sitting there, being together, doing something perfectly ordinary was the best moment of my weekend. I love my family so much and I am so grateful for ordinary moments. The magic of everyone being nearby, quietly enjoying each other’s company. It’s rare and I am so thankful for it.
I also meant to mention that yesterday, when we were in San Francisco, we went to a Vietnamese restaurant for lunch with our friends and this other couple approached us as they left and said “You have the most amazing kids.” They said they were so jealous of how well behaved our kids were and that their kids would be running around. Our kids really are well-behaved and sweet and mostly quiet. Not that I don’t know it, but it was a good reminder of another thing I should be more grateful about.
Three Things I’m Grateful For:
1. Watching a movie with my whole family. All of us on the couch.
2. Watching David hunt for eggs and watching him watch out for his little brother. He’s such a kind soul.
3. Craft time with David. I love doing anything with him. I love that we get to sit and paint.
Two Things David’s Grateful For:
1. Easter egg-hunt of course!
2. Watching a movie with Mommy and Daddy (and Nathaniel).
This is done with the January A Million Memories Kit.
Journaling Reads:
Little Nathaniel,
this is your first Christmas.
In our house, Christmastime is special.
We try to spend a lot of extra family time together and
do lots of activities.
One of those is to get and decorate our tree.
For many years, all I had was fake trees.
Two years ago, we got our first real tree and I was hooked immediately.
The delicious smell of that fresh pine makes me happy every single moment it’s in our house. This year, for the first time, we decided not to just get a tree but to cut our own tree.
We went to a local tree farm, spent a long time picking just the right tree even though it was raining.
Once we found our tree,
Daddy did all the work while
we watched and took some photos. Getting the huge tree on the car and into the house was yet another challenge.
But Daddy managed it all and we got to have a wonderful tree for your very first Christmas.
I hope we have many more
just like this one.
More stunning nature. It’s truly breathtaking, isn’t it?
This is Nathaniel right before bedtime. The little boy’s schedule has been all over the place and he’s been a total trooper. Though I could totally do without the 5am wakeup time. But oh well….
I spent the whole day doing nothing at all. I am exhausted. Really really tired. I read my book, lay around and watched TV until it was time to go to San Fran to see a friend of ours. And now we’re back home and the kids are down and all I can think of is bed. I think I am just going to spend the night reading and then go to bed.
I did make a long catch-up todo list but it’s going to have to wait for during the week.
Note to Self:
I find that there are key words or actions that can totally set me off. I can go from feeling happy and blissful to seeing black and raging anger in a split second when the right button is pressed. This is something that I need to pay more attention. If it’s that hot a button, it must mean something, right? It needs attention. It shouldn’t be that easy to get me so upset. Especially when I’ve been paying such close attention and working so hard to be mindful. So when this happens next, I need to take the time to write it down so I can figure out the patterns and work on the issues that set me off so easily.
Three Things I’m Grateful For:
1. Jake’s best friend and roommate from college happened to be in town today for a 24-hour layover with his new wife and I hadn’t met her yet so it was a huge treat to get to spend a few hours in the city with them. Nothing like good, solid friends.
2. While we were at the restaurant in San Fran, my manager’s manager from work saw me and came in to say hi and I hadn’t seen him in months so it was a real treat to get to see him even for a few minutes. So grateful he took the time to actually come in and say hi.
3. I am grateful that my book is an easy, fun but also engrossing read. It’s really long and taking me forever to finish but I am actually enjoying it.
Two Things David’s Grateful For:
1. Chocolate cupcake
2. Getting to play wii and on mommy’s iphone
Here’s this week’s items:
2. Host and/or attend a retreat.
24. Spend a day with just Nathaniel
I’ve always felt like I’ve lacked solid female friends. Over the years, I’ve had several and some closer than others. Most of my local friends live hectic lives like me and we don’t often make the time to hang out as much as we should. I don’t have any friends here who do scrapbooking and/or art journaling like I do. So I’ve been itching, for quite some time, to get together with a group of women for a weekend away. A weekend full of art and soulful bonding.
This particular retreat that we had in Santa Cruz a few weeks ago was many many months in the making. The idea was formed at least eight months ago and the first email went out in October of 2009. For many, many months it looked like it wasn’t going to happen. And then it looked possible and then went back to highly unlikely. Until it really started solidifying and next thing we knew, it was actually happening.
The numbers went from over twenty to only eight back up to the teens and then back down to seven. And finally ended up with six. A plethora of handicaps, anxiety, and planning later, we finally got to meet in a beautiful house by the beach in Santa Cruz.
I had specifically setup this item on my list with the hopes that I would have the courage to accomplish it on this weekend:
28. Drive to santa cruz by myself
But by the time the weekend rolled around, I was feeling really down, a little sick, and definitely not up for doing any driving, let alone, by myself. For those of you who don’t know (I am not sure how much I’ve mentioned it here.) I don’t drive on the freeway. I never really drove until we moved to San Diego (we lived in NYC before and there was no reason to drive) and I was almost 30 when we moved so it was considerably harder to learn at that point. Add to that the really really big (for me, scary) freeways in San Diego where the lane you come into suddenly becomes exit-only and where sometimes the exits are on the left side instead of right. I just got frazzled and freaked out really early on and over the years it became this big thing so now I don’t and can’t get on the freeway. (Thankfully, I don’t need to almost ever.) Anyway, so as amazing as he is, Jake and David drove Nathaniel and me down to Santa Cruz.
Nathaniel was coming with because I am still nursing him (I nursed David until he was two.) and I don’t pump at all. I don’t even know where my pump is. So I had no choice. I knew having Nathaniel there would take away from the feeling I was hoping to have but it was this way or no retreat at all. So off we went.
Here’s a view of where we were. We were literally one block from the beach:
Despite the small numbers there was no one who actually knew all the women. Most of us knew one or two of the others in person and one of us knew none of us. Which was one of my goals. In the end, we all really got along beautifully and I, of course, didn’t actually snap as many photos as I would have liked. Here’s one of the five of us right before we left and then one of Colleen who had to leave early to make sure her store was ok. (It was.)
All in all, it really was a wonderful weekend. Nathaniel was very well behaved during the day. Some of the nights were challenging but we made it just fine and it was odd but nice being just the two of us. I had never spent 3 nights away from David ever before and I did miss him terribly and I missed Jake a lot, too. I was really happy to be home on Sunday. I just feel a really strong sense of belonging in my home. But it was also nice to be in the company of women for a few days and to talk, talk, talk. We didn’t end up doing enough art this time but we’ll have to make up for it next time.
I learned a lot about myself through this process and a lot about putting together a gathering. I am still processing a lot of what I learned and how I feel. But I am really grateful I did it. I have been wanting to go to an art retreat for a long time but since I am still nursing and it’s really expensive and I have no friends to go with, I’ve been unable to go. I’m hoping and planning to go in 2011, once I stop nursing the little boy. And I think another soulful weekend will be a blessing, too.
Nathaniel has been hungrier than usual lately. Maybe he’s bored. Maybe it’s that his schedule has been so off. Maybe he’s having a growth spurt. Not sure. Either way, I try to make sure to give him food whenever he wants. I give him the nurition-filled food first and then give him the puffs he loves so much.
He will stuff his mouth with several of them simultaneously.
And then much away.
My parents have left this morning. Most of today was catching up on work, email, setting up my computer, etc. Nothing all too exciting. I know I said I wouldn’t but I think I will make a todo list tonight just to get myself back on schedule and see all the places where I dropped the ball in the last ten days. My parents and sister and her kids are off to Disney World right now. I am so sad that I cannot be there and be with them. I was supposed to go but traveling with both kids across the country alone was supremely daunting no matter how I thought of it. So I decided we’ll have to go next time. I am sure they will have the time of their life, though and I will be thinking of them. (And talking to them I’m sure.)
Note to Self:
I’ve always been one of those people who got her homework done as soon as I got home. I can’t stand the idea of having things dangling over my head. Knowing I have stuff due and it’s not done yet. This is something that makes my life hard at times but it also make me good at my job, good at school, etc. The thing is I can’t stand it when others aren’t like that. It drives me insane to leave work unfinished or to not do it until the last minute. It leaves me anxious and stressed out even when it’s not my task. I think this must be annoying for people who aren’t like me. And I think it’s something I need to pay attention to more. Respecting that not everyone does things the same way.
Three Things I’m Grateful For:
1. I love love love my laptop. It’s blazing fast. It’s so beautiful. Thank you soooooooo much, Mom!!
2. I am grateful that it’s the weekend and I will have some time to relax and to catch up on my life.
3. I am grateful that my time with my parents went so well and I got so much of what I wanted done and we chatted, and we spent so much quality time together. It hasn’t always been this way but this time it was almost perfect.
Two Things David’s Grateful For:
1. Playing on the computer. Jake spent the time today to fix David’s computer so he got to play Mr. PotatoHead on it.
2. Getting to have a lollipop. To be honest, he ate maybe 10% of it but it was enough to make him happy.
Our theme for April is nature.
The journaling reads:
In Turkey, we have some of the world’s most amazing sunrises. I’ve had the privilege of watching several (especially as a teenager coming back from a night out) and they are truly breathtaking.
Much like the sunsets in California.
Since California is on the West Coast of the United States it’s easy to find a spot with beautiful sunsets. I took this above photo at La Jolla Shores beach and I remember that day as if it were yesterday. People walking on the beach, surfers in the water, birds digging into the sand. Yellow, orange and red lights dancing in the sky as the rest of the skyline turns dark. It never ceases to awe and inspire me.
I remember visiting the Muir Woods in Marin County and looking at the colossal redwood trees. The sea, the trees, and the sky always make me realize how big the universe is and how small my problems seem in comparison.
Well this time it was my mom’s turn. Here she is with the little one.
And a few with both kids.
David kept making funny faces.
I cannot believe it but my mom and I went through my entire list of possibly 47 items while she was here. We have touched every single room in my house. Added little accents to every little corner. Redid my wardrobe. Went shopping. Spent a lot of time bonding and being together. They spent a lot of time with the kids, too and both the kids adore both of them. Much to my dismay, they leave tomorrow. We will miss them both so terribly much. I am the luckiest person to have them in my life.
Note to Self:
This weekend is going to be all about relaxing. Reading. Art. TV. Nothing else. I plan to relax and then relax some more. I need it. I am writing this down so that if I find myself tempted to do lists, I can come here and remember that I told myself I would relax. I have a book to read. Some silliness drawings for my class. A new computer to set up and lots of sleep to catch up on. Rest. rest. rest.
Three Things I’m Grateful For:
1. I got a new Macbook Pro today. My first mac since college. (I have had several corporate ones but this one is all mine. I am thrilled to bits and can’t wait to play with it.)
2. I am grateful for my mom’s patience with me this whole week. We ran so many errands, did so many small and big things and she did not complain one single time.
3. I am grateful that David’s home from school for another few days. I love having him around all the time. He’s so awesome.
Two Things David’s Grateful For:
1. Playing with opapa. (My dad’s been telling David stories, playing with him all the time and it’s been the highlight of David’s days.)
2. Getting to eat pancakes and apple juice for lunch.
This week’s download is some sibling words. Here is what they look like:
You can download it here: Sibling Words download.
You are welcome to play with these as much as you want and use them anywhere you’d like. You are NOT allowed to sell them ever. You don’t have to but I’d appreciate a link back if you do use them.
This is part of a weekly digital download series. They are posted every Thursday. You can find all of the ones that were posted here. If you like my downloads, please click here and give me ideas/requests for 2010. I would like to continue this feature but I am not sure I can come up with enough ideas on my own.
This week I decided I wanted something quick and easy. So I picked Emily Giffin’s Something Borrowed. I knew it was chick-lit but I knew nothing else about the book. I thought it would be light and sweet like most chick-lit.
I did not like this book.
I didn’t know the book was about cheating and for some reason the overpowering sense of how wrong the whole premise was interfered with everything else about the story. I felt this way when I read The Bridges of Madison County so many years ago. But this was even worse. I know the author tried to get me to sympathize with Rachel by making her friend not so desirable (but throwing some gems to make sure she wasn’t totally 2-dimensional) but I did not feel any empathy at all. I felt like I was being told to feel empathetic and not actually feeling it. I never cared enough about her to root for her. I kept thinking the plot would twist and she would end up with someone else. (there was a twist but something completely different and in my opinion a totally inappropriate one for the characters she was building but I can’t talk about that without spoilers.)
Anyhow, I can go on and on but I’ll just say for me this wasn’t a good book. Characters were flat and uninteresting and the plot left much to be desired. If you’ve ever read her, please let me know if all her books are this way or should I give this author another chance?
Some more shots of my dad and the kids.
Nathaniel was trying to be cooperative.
He did have fun for a few minutes, though.
We got even more stuff done today if you can believe it. Tomorrow is when the final stuff comes in and then the house will be all set and beautiful. Not that it wasn’t before but these are the extra little bits that just make it magnificent (in my opinion of course.)
I apologize for mentioning Carla’s class but not linking to it earlier. Here’s the link to: The Art of Silliness. I certainly can use some silliness in my life and I thought it might be fun stuff for David and me to do together, too. Starts tomorrow!
Note to Self:
I haven’t done art journal or scrapbooking stuff since my family arrived. While I love them so much and cherish every moment we’ve had together, I do miss doing some art. Especially since my mom brought me some divine fabric, too. This weekend, I am looking forward to sitting down and playing for a while. It’s amazing the role art plays in my life. Reading and art have become two things I cherish, crave, and need. They heal my soul and calm my spirit.
Three Things I’m Grateful For:
1. I am grateful that my kids are wonderful and kind spirits. Nathaniel is standing up all the time now and today he was patting his belly; he looked just like a prairie dog. David’s so kind and wonderful with him and they both make my heart swell.
2. I am grateful for good heating. It’s cold outside again today and I love that I am in my warm home. I am grateful to have one.
3. I am grateful for my parents. They are so kind, so generous, such good good people. I am so very lucky.
Two Things David’s Grateful For:
1. Going to the movies with my Dad (they saw “How to Train a Dragon”)
2. Getting a new Didj game from my parents (Indiana Jones)
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projects for twenty twenty-six
projects for twenty twenty-five
projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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