(mis)adventures in housekeeping

When I was young, I always assumed that once I became a grown-up, I would automatically acquire all of the necessary domestic skills that many adults have. I'm not sure why this is, since my own mother (though possessing many domestic talents in the cooking and cleaning areas) struggled with crafts like sewing and knitting. But now I know better.

Oh, how I know.

Tonight, Mr. Husband had a post-work social event, so I took advantage of my post-bedtime solitude to pull out the sewing machine. (Lady Infant's need to be. held. every. minute. of. wakefulness, and Sir Toddler's fascination with the plug and the foot pedal make sewing a rare event around here.) My plan was to start three projects and hopefully finish two of them. I started with a binky leash, since some of the ones I used with Sir Toddler magically disappeared.

If you know how to put pictures side by side, post a comment on this webzone.

It came out ok from this distance, but if you look closely the thread tension is hoooorribly off. And the bobbin jammed about 1076 times before I realized I had threaded the top thread incorrectly. On a Brother machine, which is 9846 times more user-friendly than the 1970 Sears Kenmore I was rocking (not rocking at all) for a few years.

The fact that this project took almost an hour didn't discourage me from moving on to my next project...

Converting a pair of hand-me-down flares to skinny jeans.

This may have partly been a move of desperation since I recently evaluated my closet and realized that I have ONE pair of skinny jeans that fit my postpartum body and doesn't have holes in the knees. However, in my eagerness to have TWO pairs of skinny jeans that (sort of) fit my postpartum body and don't have holes in the knees, I completely bungled the measuring and marking step, so I made them way too narrow, even for skinny jeans. So we're back to the drawing board, fig and lit.

My plans to make a nursing cover should go swimmingly.

My sewing skills may not have progressed from my fifth-grade introduction-to-sewing pillow project, but I do pride myself in my cooking skills (even if I mostly just follow instructions from my mother, my grandmother, or Christopher Kimball). However, I struggled for years to master pancakes...

This is considered a successful attempt. And in case you're pinning me as a domestic breakfast diva, this was dinner.

yes, pancakes.

I also love having a systematic approach to storing and preparing ingredients. I occasionally buy whole chickens on sale, butcher them at home, freeze the parts, make stock from the carcass, and then make a meal from the carcass meat...and so on. Since I usually drive 20 minutes over two town lines to shop at the most magical place on earth every other week, the freezer figures heavily into my system. So you'd think that I would know better than to thoughtlessly shove a 3-lb package of ground beef into the freezer without first portioning it.

Apparently not. Again, in case you were pinning me a domestic diva from my chicken story...

However, there is a happy ending to this story.

I got a fever. And the only cure is more meatballs.

Maybe I'll have all this down by the time my children are old enough to remember their childhood?

Weekend recap and a prayer request

My bio right now says that I'm a freelance musician and a stay at home mom. Mostly I am the second these days, but I have some performances coming down the pipeline starting next weekend.

(Photo Credit)

I will not be performing on Broadway, by the way.

So this past weekend felt like the last weekend we'll have together as a family for a while without Vampire Mommy. Playing musicals is always a lot of fun, but it is definitely a balancing act with young kids, one of whom is going though a stage where nighttime is a par-tay.

On Saturday, we were able to host our newlywed friends (they've been married for just over a week, guys!) for coffee in the morning and it was wonderful. The afternoon was spent trying to squeeze my postpartum hips and short short legs into various pairs of jeans at the mall, and it was horrible. So that's enough about Saturday.

We took the kids to one of our favorite parks on Sunday. It's a place we frequent a lot in the late spring and summer, and despite a chilly wind, it was a good time.

The view didn't stink, either.

Sir Toddler's favorite part...picking up sticks and banging them on things.

It really makes a difference in our overall stress levels if Mr. Husband and I get out of the house on weekends. We are fortunate enough to be within easy driving distance of a number of stroller-friendly trails, and we appreciate them even more now that the snow has (finally! FINALLY!) melted. Our backyard isn't very toddler-friendly for a number of reasons, so it was great to see Sir Toddler able to interact with nature.

Unbeknownst to us, our pastor passed away right at the start of the 11:30 Mass on Sunday. We greeted him briefly as we left the 9:30, but now I wish we had stopped to really talk to him. Please pray for him. He was a kind man and a good shepherd of his flock.

Birthday blessings

When I was in college, it was a tradition in our Catholic campus ministry to say a prayer of thanksgiving for someone's life on their birthday. Last week I celebrated Sir Toddler's, and was overcome by how much he has grown in two years. Today I celebrate my own. Birthdays during motherhood are much less hedonic than those of years past. This morning started at 4 AM with Lady Infant singing for her supper and refusing to be placated by the pacifier, and again at 6 AM with the same story. I had to fight through my fog of grogginess to get us all dressed and out the door for Sir Toddler's dentist appointment, where the tears started when we got his weight...long before we sat in the dentist's chair. I spent his nap cleaning the bathroom (and trying to de-mold the tub toys, urgh) and sorting baby clothes (we have an ongoing clothing exchange between Lady Infant, her four-year-old cousin in FL, and that cousin's sister due in August). And yet I couldn't have asked for a better day.

I woke up to the sound of two lives that wouldn't have existed without me, and next to my favorite person in the whole wide world. The sun is shining and the weather is beautiful.

Being an April baby from New England, I've had a lot of birthdays where that wasn't the case.

And today I am giving thanks for not only my own life, for for the lives of my children. If my own parents hadn't been open to that gift of life, my son and my daughter would not be on this earth. Mr. Husband and I can't imagine our lives without them now that they are here, and I know that they are also beloved by our parents, siblings, grandparents, other family, and friends. My children are more precious to me than I can describe, and they are the birthday present that keeps on giving.

Starting a Long Thaw

For the last three years, I have been pregnant or nursing a baby during Lent, so traditional fasting hasn't been practical. Instead, I have fasted from social media, and I have to say that returning to Facebook and Instagram has been somewhat painful this Easter because...Easter pictures. It seems that everyone I follow who does not live within an hour's drive of me took hundreds of pictures of their children hunting Easter eggs in sun hats and short sleeves, enjoying the spring weather. With the exception of yesterday's 55 degrees with sun, we are still waiting for our spring weather to arrive. We very optimistically took the kids to a nearby state park on Saturday since our outdoor thermometer said that it was 50 degrees in the sun. It apparently didn't account for the 30 degree windchill.

On the bright side, we learned that our double jogger handles small amounts of snow marvelously.

Mr. Husband and I love spending time outside with the kids. We are fortunate to live in a town surrounded by nature reserves with walking and hiking trails and playgrounds, and during the warmer months we spend a lot of our weekends outdoors. This winter we've spent most of our weekends in our small apartment or at the mall, so Sir Toddler was ecstatic playing on the "side" and the "sing" even though his hands were practically blue when we left.

Running around in excitement. 

"IDGAF, Mom."

It was nice to be outside but honestly I was reminded that we have a long way to go until spring truly arrives. I used to say that I preferred cold weather to hot weather because you can always bundle up more, but being a stay-at-home mom has completely changed my tune. Being able to take Sir Toddler out for a jaunt in the stroller, even if it's just to drop something off in the mailbox around the corner, really helps with the cabin fever for both of us. (Lady Infant still doesn't care as long as she's being held.) I was hoping to get a nice family picture with us dressed up in our Easter finery, but Easter Sunday dawned with blustery cold winds (and snow in some places) and I ran upstairs as soon as we got home to get some pants and warm socks on.

This is the springiest picture we got this weekend.

I suppose the lesson to be learned is that social media can be a dangerous purveyor of envy, and that I need to be grateful for the good things that we have, even if the weather isn't one of them. We enjoyed four glorious days together since Mr. Husband took Good Friday and Easter Monday off; we took both kids to Holy Thursday Mass and they were surprisingly good; we had a nice Easter spent with family, and we actually had an enjoyable walk outside yesterday.

But I'll *even more* grateful when sun and warm weather arrive in New England. Really, truly.

Is there any good way to start a blog?

I've given it much consideration, and I've come to the conclusion that it's extremely difficult to write the first post of a blog without it sounding extremely awkward. So, instead of giving you an organized and straightforward, but awkward, inaugural post, I'm going to write a stream-of-consciousness-style post that is equally awkward but infinitely easier to write while managing a toddler's constant requests for "more help" and "more hands."

My firstborn. We'll call him Sir Toddler for now.

For months I've toyed with the idea of starting a blog, but I was stuck for the longest time on coming up with a title. Although in college I usually titled my papers after I wrote them, since most bloggers put the title in the url, it seemed an important requirement to begin. I didn't want to use my last name, first to protect the identity of my children, and because I used to be the teacher of middle school and high school aged children who are extraordinarily enthusiastic about Googling their teachers' names. I thought about using something musical, since I am a musician, but that wasn't going to be the focus of my blog and I couldn't come up with anything I liked. I thought about picking something interesting from my lifestyle, but I'm a young woman in a stage where everything is more or less temporary. We have small children, but they're going to grow up. We live in a small apartment, but we don't want to live here forever. We live in New England, but we may someday move.  And that's when I hit my inspiration for a title.

This piece of music is based on a quotation from St. Teresa of Avila, roughly translated, "Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you, all things are passing away: God never changes." It has become my mantra the last two months.

Surviving the worst winter New England has seen since 1995?

Our neighbor's porch after the accumulated snow and ice fell off the roof of our building. In our row of four units, only our porch railing survived.

Surviving that winter with two children under two? The second born having been born the day after the first snowstorm? With the sidewalk connected our front door and the parking lot for our building obliterated by the plows multiple times over the course of the winter? With the newborn nursing around the clock but still requiring several weight checks as well as a third hearing screen? All while caring for an increasingly cabin-feverish toddler in a small apartment? It's all behind us now. And all of this can only get better.

Lady Infant smiles tentatively. Perhaps she senses an April snowstorm. It's happened before.

Or so we hope.