my poorly documented christmas

Unfortunately, the combination of our kids getting up so early that the light was still very poor when we started opening things, and my feeling caught up in the moment and not like taking pictures, means that there are not many shots of our day together. Clover got sick (again!!) on Christmas eve, and was in pretty rough shape on Christmas day. She was coughing up a lung and her poor face was all chapped and red from the snot. She looked pretty miserable, and most of the shots I got of her also looked miserable. 

Tim was also not feeling well that day, and wound up laying in bed for a lot of the late morning/early afternoon. But despite the issues, we did have a nice morning together. 

We had breakfast together first, and I fired up my new Lodge cast iron griddle. We had soaked spelt pancakes with lots of butter and maple syrup, and fresh bacon from the farmers market. 

Soon, we were doling out the unruly amount of stuff under our Christmas tree, and enjoying our kids' reactions. 

One of Violet's gifts was an At-at walker that we found on craigslist. The thing is practically as big as she is....

I love the Christmas morning messy head/pajama body combo. So cute. 

 

We also found a monstrous lot of playmobil on craigslist that ended up including parts (with no instructions....seriously, not the best. lol) for two castles, add on towers, a treasure box, and almost a hundred people and horses I think. Whoa. Plus all of the tiny little extras like swords, crossbows, maces, shields, flags, catapaults, battering rams.....it was really overwhelming once we got it into the house and actually looked at it. We spent some time sorting through things and seriously narrowed down the collection of things we gave the girls on Christmas. 

The whole castle got assembled and put together creatively since there were no manuals, and we hid it all morning under a sheet on the coffee table. It was the last thing to get unveiled after everything else, and the playmobil people and furniture we picked out to give them. I think it was like 7 horsemen and horses, plus maybe 10 other people, and some furnishings that we used and the rest is packed away to come out another day. I thought it might be fun a while down the road to have a playmobil reward box, and have a selection of things to choose from for rewards. 

 

We also took the girls out to look at Christmas lights that night since it hadn't worked out before that. Unfortunately, we were headed for a specific place we we were told of, and when we were almost there the road was blocked by police because of an accident that had just happened. So we winged it and found some rich neighborhoods to cruise through. For some reason it was really intriguing for me to stare into their lighted windows to see what they were doing, and how they had decorated. Lol. Creeper.

Northern Virginia is all slushy with wet snow and rain right now, so there is very little motivation for me to go out and do anything. Baby, it's cold outside! Kids, go play with your playmobil! mama wants to sit around and sip tea from her new mugs! Lol.

finished object and other things

After being so sick for a while, I fell really behind on Christmas gift making. My progress is pretty pathetic.....mostly I've just been managing to barely maintain regular life processes around here (just don't check my bathroom cleaning. omg.)

But I did finish one thing in time for Christmas

Granted, I only got one iphone shot of it before sending it off to the recipient, but at least I have that!

It's a pattern from the new book Island from Jane Richmond and Shannon Cook. After having some initial casting on issues, which always seem to happen with EVERY project I do, it was pretty smooth sailing. I hope the person who gets this likes it! The yarn is spud and chloe sweater, which is a cotton/merino blend. Nice and soft.

Other recent news around here is that Violet and Clover both caught colds a while ago....again...*cries* (I swear, Satan's minions are gleefully piping germs into the nursery at church every Sunday), and Violet was suffering from congestion one day. She suddenly became very upset and said something was "up there" and asked for a knife to get it out. Lol. 

I had used a butter knife to remove some things from her cast, so I guess knives are now the method we use to remove unwanted objects. But I wasn't going to give her a knife to get rid of her snot, so she ended up asking for a band aid instead. All day she was pretty upset about her nose, which always happens when she gets the least bit snotty. Fast forward to 9:30 PM, she woke up screaming and wound up downstairs with us for some Christmas Vacation. 

It was then that, through some deductive reasoning, we realized she had shoved a small rubber computer part up her nose. *facepalm*

The battle to remove it was epic and dramatic, and the unlikely tool that worked was a blunt tapestry needle that I had been using to weave in yarn ends. Suddenly her breathing REALLY improved. 

That same day we also went thrifting at a hospice charity and found some fun dress-up items. Clover feels like a real lady.

A very large batch of Ina Garten brownies was also concocted here this week. The cleanup crew was hard at work....You can see the sad visage of my sewing machine in the top left of the photo. It's been untouched and unused for weeks. Weeks! This means that zero progress was made on the girls' quilt, or their tutus. Clover's birthday is in February, so I guess that will be my new goal. It makes me sad that I've had no energy/opportunity to make Christmas dresses for the kids either. They have been very demanding of my attention and time lately for various reasons, and it makes it hard to do anything like shower or cook regular meals, let alone craft. By the time they are in bed and I have the kitchen cleaned, there is no gas left for anything but sitting on the couch with the hubs and knitting in front of  a show (yay for free downton abbey season two on amazon prime instant!)

I know people say that you need to slow down and enjoy this age with your kids because it goes so fast, but sometimes it's hard to not just want them to be older so I can get some sleep and be able to reason with the people I live with all day. I'm sure many moms have seasons where they are feeling less parental bliss than they think they should, but it's still hard not to feel super guilty because you think you're the only one. 

On that note, I hear Violet screaming bloody murder because "Coco hit me with a stick, mama!!" 

Gotta go!

life

It feels like I've been absent from my little blog for quite some time now....the title of this post has two meanings - first the obvious, that what follows will be a bit of info on my life right now. The other, a little less obvious. Since I haven't much to share in the creating department recently, I decided it was time to share something in the life department...

Our culture seems to have this rule that you don't start telling people you're pregnant until you're out of your first trimester, and maybe starting to show. I'm not totally sure why this is...maybe that you want to make sure you're past the "iffy" first trimester where things can go wrong? You don't want to disappoint people with bad news. Or maybe that it's a bit scary to open yourself up to sharing if something does go wrong.  I've gathered that this cultural rule exists by observation, and the way people assume that you're about ready to start waddling around when you first announce that you're expecting.

new mama and baby clover

The way I see it is that if I were to go through a perfect pregnancy or a tough one, I would rather go through it with the support of others. How would anyone know to give encouragement or share personal experience if they don't know? And worrying about disappointing others pales in comparison to the sadness felt by the parent. 

violet's first moments after our home birth

All that to say..... that I'm due to have a baby in the end of July!

After two uneventful and mostly worry-free pregnancies, this one has been a trial so far, and this new life is what's kept me away from my blog and much creating lately. 

Two Fridays ago, we found ourselves heading in to get an ultrasound. It was a day of sadness, because I thought we were going in to affirm that I was losing the pregnancy. That morning, I had a very painful, strange, and scary experience while making breakfast for the kids. A sudden jolt of pain and nausea struck me, and I immediately knew that something was happening inside of me.

I literally felt like death. It hurt to move - stabbing and shooting pain erupting through the "baby area" when I turned or bent. My energy was down to nothing. Horrible headache, and feverish chills. My stomach felt like it was full of jello, and I was too nauseous to eat anything. And I had started to bleed. I'd only found out I was pregnant a few days before Thanksgiving, and hadn't even gotten an appointment with my midwives yet.

My husband came home from work to be with me, and my midwife sent in an order for an ultrasound at a radiology center that was kind enough to fit me in even though there were no appointments available that day. Poor Clover was really concerned for me, and kept saying that mommy was sick. Violet gave me kisses and asked me to stop crying. Once we arrived for our appointment, we all waited in the room together for the ultrasound tech to come in and take a look at what had happened to me, preparing ourselves for the worst and hoping for the best. 

one of the few trips to the pool - I was VERY pregnant with Violet

To our surprise and joy, we watched as they located the little flickering heartbeat. We listened to them describe what we were looking at, and that they could see nothing abnormal or concerning. A sigh of relief, and a thanks to God were uttered before we thanked the nurses and headed for home. But despite the joy of knowing that there was still life inside of me, I couldn't help but feel scared still because I had no idea what had happened to me, and what was wrong.

Over the next week, I continued to feel awful. Pain still plagued me, I was feeling pale and cold and nauseous, and the specific episode of extreme pain, watery tummy, chills, and bleeding happened several more times, once in the middle of decorating our Christmas tree with the kids. I spent the days struggling to care for my kids, to keep my spirits up, to keep some food down, and to keep the nagging fear away. The last episode I had was the most concerning to me, and I wondered if "it was finally happening". 

But the day following the last episode, I began to feel significantly better. Food started to look appealing, and I had less pain and a burst of energy. I was torn between relief in feeling better, and worry that this meant something bad. My appointment with the midwives came the next day, and I described everything that had been happening. It still remained a mystery, but I was feeling loads better, and the midwife didn't think that I had experienced a miscarriage. I could either schedule another ultrasound to check things out, or just wait and trust until the next appointment when they could search for that little heartbeat with the doppler. 

Since last Friday everything has been back to relative normal. I've been run down like you would expect in your first trimester (while chasing two crazy kids, still nursing a toddler, and not getting enough sleep). I'm able to do more than just lay around, huddled under a blanket all day. Some nausea and discomfort has remained, but nothing debilitating. And I'm starting to believe that things really are back to normal, that the baby and I are ok, and things will be fine going forward. I'm praying that there won't be a second round of all the craziness.

I'm thankful for a husband who has comforted me, prayed for me, pulled my slack, encouraged me, and kept watch over me.

Now it's time to attempt catching up with the life that kept moving without me. Messes to be cleaned, plans to be followed through with, leftovers to be tossed now because I couldn't eat them for lunch, routine to get back into, reading to be done, sleep to be had, chocolate to eat (I literally didn't even look at it for about a week and a half! whaaat?). 

In other (happy! hooray!) news, somebody is up and walking again on her own two feet

And we had a great time picking out a Christmas tree on the farm two weekends ago. It was a gorgeous, foggy morning in a very pretty setting in Round Hill VA.