into the light [more film]

while the days are surely getting longer and it is later in the morning when ethan exclaims "the sun is coming up, mama!" and later in the evening when he asks "is it dark outside, mama?", there is still something special about all the darkness that comes with this season. i will always remember this winter as the one we started eating our dinners (and sometimes breakfasts) by candlelight, or oil lamp-light. the one when i decided i'd better use up all those beautiful candlesticks i've been holding onto for all these years (i think i still had one pair a friend gave to me in high school!), saving for that special occasion. realizing that every meal we sit down to together as a family is special. and savoring them as much as i possibly can.

eight and a half weeks

it's been eight and a half weeks since we welcomed cora into our family. as to be expected, there have been many up days and many down days. she is an absolute delight and i am so over the moon that we get to have her in our family. but seriously, this two kid thing is no joke. after the holidays, a few people said to me "it must be nice to get back to your routine." ahem, routine? hahahaha. oh well, we are kind of, sort of settling into something may or may not resemble a routine. i am trying, always always, to find a balance between being present in as many moments of our days as i possibly can and savoring this precious time with ethan and cora, while also taking care of myself and finding time to do some of the things that make me happy and fill me up as a person, not just a mama. i know, lofty goals, huh?

well, in the spirit of that, here are a few of my intentions for this year. i say intentions, not resolutions, because while i do intend to work on these things, i don't want to feel like a failure if, inevitably, some of them slip away through the course of the year. i'm sharing them here mostly so that i can be reminded of them later in the year when that happens.

:: take care of myself. this includes resuming my home yoga practice, doing a better job of eating well and not mindlessly grabbing handfuls of chocolate chips every other time i walk through the kitchen (which is all the time), making a strong effort to get out and walk even on cold days, making the time to shower more often (sorry, but you know it's true), and try try try to get enough sleep.

:: get our household under control. i know "decluttering" is some kind of new religion. and i know it was my resolution last year. but this time it's for real. jared and i are totally on the same page about getting our house under control and we've already made a lot of progress, even though it may not seem noticeable. we are working hard to get rid of stuff we don't need, maintain areas of the house that we've already cleaned and organized, and deal with stuff as soon as it comes in the door. this also includes boring adult stuff like managing finances better.

:: be more present and intentional with my time. stop wasting time mindlessly scrolling through facebook and instagram on my phone when i could be getting something else more valuable done.

:: write more. i'm setting myself a loose goal of writing something at least once a week. this may be a post here, in my journal, or another piece. i currently do a lot of writing for work, but i'd like to work on more personal writing, and maybe even try to get a piece published somewhere? who knows, but it's something i really enjoy and need to carve out the time to do it (see goal #1).

i have lots of other more specific projects i'd like to work on or get done this year as well, but for now i'm sticking to these overall intentions. what are your intentions/resolutions/goals for this year? i'd love to hear.

late spring on film

some of the recent film photos i've taken... i've been inspired by elise's blog recently and i'm going to try to shoot one roll of film every month (or so). i do miss shooting film and every time i get a roll back i think, why aren't i doing more of this?! so here i go. a new project, which i need like a hole in the head right now, but oh well. i'm already 3/4 of the way through my next roll, so i'm hopeful that i can keep up.

where we spend our days now

as i mentioned last post, we have never spent as much time in our backyard as we have so far this spring/summer season. ethan requests "backyawd" practically as soon as he's halfway through breakfast. after we set up the kiddie pool last week, he convinced us to take off his pjs during breakfast this morning and almost made a break for the pool in his diaper before i realized the back door wasn't latched shut. he's a sneaky one.

we've been working on not picking all the flowers or trampling the garden. he massacred one of my peony plants, picking every single bud before they'd had a chance to bloom. we're having a bit more luck with the other two, as well as some of the other flowers that are slowly beginning to bloom. he seems to be slowly getting the hang of being gentle with the plants and is now excited about watering them all, including all the weeds, walking around dutifully with his little pitcher repeating "agua pants! agua pants!"

i decided to go all out and plant almost exclusively tomatoes this year. i've got a healthy variety of yellow pear, matt's wild cherry, roma, ace bush, big rainbow, and my all-time favorite: cherokee purple. i started them from seed in mid-april (a few weeks late for our region) and didn't get them planted until a few weeks ago, so they're all still quite small. i'm hoping for a healthy harvest come august, though.

i'd still like to get over to a garden store or the farmer's market and get some more flowers to put in pots and my flower boxes on the front porch, but we'll see if that's going to happen or not. my garage wall garden is going strong and overflowing with nasturtiums that i cannot wait to bloom. especially knowing that these are safely out of reach of small toddler hands.

as much as i truly loved growing up in the middle of manhattan, i'm kind of excited that ethan will get a bit more of the outdoors in the everyday of his childhood than i did. eating tomatoes and strawberries straight off the plants, digging in the dirt, "swimming" everyday...if the past few weeks/months are any indication, it's going to be a really great summer around here. 

surrounded by love and beauty

this spring has been busy busy busy. i wish i had posted more often over the past few months. i wish i had posted about our trip to new york. which was absolutely wonderful, save for the fact that ethan refused to be out of our sight, making it a bit exhausting. he was not a fan of the carousel in central park, but he did enjoy the zoo. mostly he talked about the "horses wheels" for a while (the horses and carriages in central park). he also enjoyed making two new baby friends (cy and ren) and getting a complete sugar high on berry sauce at a restaurant in my parents' neighborhood. he made such an adorable scene that the owner came over to photograph his purple sauce-covered face and brought us free drinks and extra dessert.

meanwhile, back at home. we have been spending more time in our backyard than we ever have since we moved into this house. i found a killer play house for ethan on craigslist and he basically wants to be there all. the time. sadly, the house is not enough of a distraction from massacring the garden, but we do what we can and i'm taking a lot of deep breaths and reminding myself that it is just a garden. it's okay.

i knit this vest for ethan last fall (i think) from one of my favorite baby patterns- pebble vest. i have made this pattern four times now and am still not bored of it. it is such a basic and classic baby vest. i adapted it to make a larger size, just using the same pattern but with bulky yarn instead of worsted. i ran out of the pale green yarn (it was leftover from another project) so i went with a color block look and finished the back panel with some doubled spud and chloe sweater yarn. this vest has been perfect for the cool spring days we've been having and i'm hoping it still fits him in the fall too. (on ravelry, here)

i have a few more crafty posts coming up and hopefully i will find some time to writing some more of the other posts i have in a queue in my head as well. about a month ago, right after the earthquake, i wrote a whole long post about nepal and my six weeks there in 1999 and what that meant to me. of course i then never made the time to scan some photos from my album (oh, the days when i used to meticulously make photo albums!). but it's not too late. i can still finish that story and share it here. this, i know.

i cleaned out some more of my sewing studio and found a stack of photographs and prints from some of my old flickr/blog friends. abby and andrea and chelsea and mary and tara. it made my heart so happy and i wondered why the hell these beautiful works of art were sitting in a pile under some other stuff. i vow to find some frames and hang them up soon so i can see them all the time and be surrounded by that love and beauty.

i have some film i finally shot and got developed and actually scanned! unsurprisingly, the entire roll is of ethan. it's lovely.

more soon.
xo

lately

hi friends.

of course this is a re-do of a post i must have written about a month ago but somehow never completed and published (as my friend andrea likes to say: hastag motherhood. also known as hashtag unfinished everything. story of my life).

winter is maybe almost sort of over, i think. sure, it's still a bit cold. but this winter has got nothing on last year so i'm not complaining. in fact, i wish we had gotten more snow! ethan became obsessed with his mini-shovel and the poor kid has had very little snow to work with. oh well, it didn't stop him from getting in his "suit" (snowsuit) and wandering around outside to his little heart's content. jared and i are totally pjs all day kinda people on the weekend if we don't have plans, but we've learned the hard way that active toddlers need to get out of the house. so as reluctant as i may be some of these cold days, i know we need to get outside before the ethan-monster arrives. luckily even though it's still cold, it's warmed up enough to warrant suit-free play outside and now his obsession has shifted to his adorable rubber boots (that he can amazingly put on himself! what the what?!)

ethan is TALKING. well, he's been talking since a little before his birthday, but it is full-blown now. he puts words together, recognizes a bunch of letters and colors, and count, and puts multiple words together. he's become very demanding: "mama run" "mama play" "freddie lay down" "agua table" "more raisin peeees", yikes! he knows exactly two spanish words: agua and oso (bear). his language skills are off the charts (literally), which kind of makes me feel better about what a terrible sleeper he is (when we talked to our new pediatrician about his sleeping issues a few weeks ago she shrugged and said "sounds like you made a bad sleeper" thanks). his brain is just going all the time.

he is obsessed with his baby doll. sometimes when he's left it upstairs or in another room out of the blue he'll look at me, put his hands up and say "baaaaby? baaaby?". he is equally obsessed with his nanny and nanny-share friends. every day he asks about them. on the weekends we tell him he will see them on monday and his face lights up and he says "MONDAY!". no one has ever been more excited about mondays in the history of time. he is also obsessed with buses, which is convenient since we live down the street from a school and he gets to see the "bool buses" (school buses) every morning (not to be confused with the "cee buses" (city buses), obviously. and he continues to be super into his books. to the point where i have literally had to hide a few that i just could not stand to read again (little blue truck leads the way? no thank you). other recent favorites include: green eggs and ham, go dog go, goodnight moon, are you a cow?, corduroy, and go go go stop!.

in other news, thank you for all the kind words and orders after my shop reopening last month. there are many goodies left if you're still interested. have a look if you like. i have also been busy (almost) finishing another quilt and some knitting projects, and, ahem, I READ A BOOK. in like three days, people. and it was not remotely related to pregnancy, parenting, or anything of the like. (this is how you lose her, by junot diaz, if you're interested).

we are off to new york city for "spring break" and some family and friend time. i'm mostly looking forward to taking him on many cee buses and subways, maybe the central park zoo and carousel, seeing some baby friends, hopefully some relaxation, and lots of grandma and grandpa time.

more soon. xo

i noticed that all of these photos were either taken in or from the kitchen. a pretty accurate summary of our lives these days...

easing into the year.

on new year's eve at about 10pm when jared and i were laying in bed about to fall asleep, i half-jokingly asked him what his resolutions were. he's not a resolutions kind of guy. i am though, so here are mine.

:: declutter and organize our house. i am on a big kick for getting this done this year. we are not the neatest of people, so my expectations remain realistic. but i know we have loads of stuff in our house that we do not need and do not use. it's time to clear some of it out. my plan is to spend at least part of one evening every week working on this. so far, i have mostly cleaned out my nighttable drawer and some of my closet. i get overwhelmed by big clean outs, so i'll just be doing a little bit here and there. my office, studio, kitchen, and the rest of my clothes are also on the chopping block. the basement is off limits until the rest of the house is done.

::  read at least one book. i recently realized that the only books i've read in the last two years have been on the topics of pregnancy, childbirth, or parenting. must change that now. accepting any and all recommendations.

:: sew more clothes for ethan. i've already started on this goal with a pair of quick change trousers from handmade beginnings (pictured above). i'm thinking a few more pairs of those will be in the works for the spring and likely some overalls. he remains awash in handknit sweaters from me and my mom.

:: make two quilts. one is already in progress and i have begun thinking about another one. i may have a problem, but it's a very good one to have.

:: use what we have/ meal plan. this is related to the decluttering goal. our pantry is full. there are jars and jars of dried ingredients that get pushed to the back of the shelf and it is high time to use up some of those ingredients. i'm hoping this will inject some variety into our meals. i have a love/hate relationship with meal planning. i have come to realize that we just will never be strict meal planners, and whenever we try to do that it only lasts a few weeks before we give up. there must be a middle ground...

:: practice yoga regularly. back in the fall when ethan started sleeping a little better (before he stopped that, but is now back on track, knock on wood), i started to practice yoga for about 15 minutes every morning. i was able to get up a little bit earlier since i wasn't so dead tired from the night but this has gone downhill again. on monday i was able to practice for a full hour and it was absolute bliss.

:: reopen the shop and keep it stocked. i have loads of ideas for new products and while i recognize that i have a limited capacity to work on my shop, i'm still hoping to carve out a little bit of time each month to work on new products and keep everything stocked well.

:: blog more regularly and take more non-phone photos. i know i won't be a multiple posts per week blogger like i was way back when, but the unpublished/unwritten posts thing is ridiculous. i have thoughts and projects and photos that i want to share and i'd like to get better about doing that.

so there you have it. i suppose that's enough to keep me busy, no? most of the way through january and i'm finally sharing this list. do you have any goals or resolutions or hopes and dreams for this year? i know much of the fresh new year feeling has worn off for lots of folks by this now, but i'm still riding it high and i hope you are too.

back soon. xo

hello december

how did this happen so quickly? i'm sure you are all wondering quite the same things, so i will skip over the small talk about time flying, etc.

i have a lot to share, and even a few unpublished posts all written and ready to go, save for that darn photo uploading and editing task. sheesh. but what i wanted to pop in and mention (if there is, in fact, anyone even reading anymore, is there?) that i'll be over at habit this month, for their very final month of that space. i'll be joining many other wonderful women who have contributed over the past six years of habit and, as always, i am honored and humbled to do so. i have been so inspired by the space that emily, molly, and tara have created there and i will miss it dearly. please join us over there this month for this last hurrah.

xo

june

it is june. ethan is fast approaching eleven months. we have begun talking about his birthday party and i have all kinds of fun ideas for a picnic in the park across from our house.

i keep thinking back to where we were a year ago. we had just returned from our magical weekend up north, where i finally got to go swimming in a beautiful lake. we were starting to think about maybe getting some baby stuff. we had finished our childbirth class and i think it was around late june when we scheduled all of the rest of our midwife appointments through 41 weeks and jared and i looked at each other in disbelief while standing at the reception desk at the birth center. my mom visited for a hot weekend and there was a crazy storm that left us with no power for three days and i slept with cold washcloths on my large belly and we charged our phones in a yarn store.

but now. here we are. june again. it has been raining like crazy. and it's getting hot. and i have finally gotten my garden (mostly) planted. ethan has not been all that helpful in that department, although he does like eating dirt and is maybe, just maybe, figuring out how to throw a ball for freddie. once that happens, we will be golden.

the highchair is putting on some mileage as we drag it back and forth between our kitchen and backyard so that we can eat as many meals outdoors as possible. his all-time favorite food seems to be black beans, with strawberries as a close second.

we are also getting some mileage on the used bike trailer we bought this spring. so far ethan falls right to sleep as soon as we start moving, so i'd call that a success. 

he is not quite walking yet, but he is crazy for pushing his walker wagon around and i brought it to the park last week and he walked almost a whole block's length to the playground! i was pretty amazed.

we are thinking about some camping trips for this summer. maybe one in late july and another one in september, when it cools down a bit. any tips on camping with a baby? we're also headed to chicago for a weekend next month, got any tips in that department? we've never been and i'm excited to explore the city.

more soon.
xo

back in the winter

hi friends! i know, it's been forever. even more forever since i shot this film (film!) last fall and winter. when it arrived back from being developed (after months of sitting around waiting to be mailed) jared asked me what was on the roll and i said "lots of baby ethan." he seems like a giant compared to the little baby in these shots. and i love them.

i've been struggling to write a long post about where we've been for the past couple of months since my last post (figuratively...literally, we've been here), but i just can't find the words (or, the time to find the words) right now. so for now. film. and soon, more polaroids. i'm making my way back, very very slowly.

more soon. promise.

on being intentional, and other ramblings

first of all, i'd like to thank all of you, from the bottom of my heart, who took the time to read our birth story and send kind words our way. i was nervous about sharing such a personal and intimate story so publicly, but i found so much strength and inspiration in reading the birth stories of other families, that i felt compelled to share ours. i'm grateful for the support i've received from you all.

in the meantime...here's what's been happening in our little corner of the world.

as i'm sure you've heard, it has been incredibly freezing here in the north tundra. seriously, schools have been closed five times so far this year just for temperatures! and us hardy minnesotans don't take that lightly, so you know it's bad. i had many visions of getting outside everyday in the winter with ethan, snuggled in the ergo (which we have mostly transitioned to from the moby wrap-though not entirely) in his down patagonia snowsuit. but seriously, windchills in the negative thirties are just too damn cold for that. baby or not. so, we've been snuggling up indoors a lot. i've been knitting more (spreading the love to all the many many new babies in my life these days), trying to cook dinner on the regular, hanging out on the living room floor with a baby that desperately wants to crawl, reading up on ways to feed ethan solid food, and actually finally starting his quilt (with plans for a quilt for my brother and his new wife soon to follow).

i am quite happy with how i have managed my photo project for the year so far. i have missed a few days here and there, and most days (especially when i go to work) i don't snap a photo until late in the evening, but i am happy that i'm recording my days in this way and do hope that i keep it up for the year, at least. (again, you can follow along here if you like). these photos, in fact, were taken about three weeks ago and it is seriously insane how much i can see that his face has changed in that time (he was also getting over a weird virus rash thing then, so i'm sure that's part of it too). just makes me even more grateful that i'm recording our days this way.

ethan is finally starting to (some days, kind of) go down to sleep around 7pm-ish and stay there for a few hours. so i am savoring that time as we can eat dinner together, and then have longer chunks of time to actually accomplish things. i try to stay off my phone/ipad during that time and do something that i just can't do while ethan is awake. like cutting fabric, or doing something in the kitchen like making diaper wash or deodorant or crackers.

i have never been one to choose a word for the new year. sometimes i make loose resolutions or goals for the year, but not this year. i did think of a word, without intending to, that i'd like to guide me for the year. intentional. mostly i mean for this guide how i spend my time. i want to be intentional with my free time, since i have so little of it now and i want to use it wisely to do things that are fulfilling and meaningful so that i feel happy with what i am able to accomplish. i want to be intentional in how i spend my time with ethan. especially as he grows older, i want to be a good role model for him. i want to be intentional with my relationships with others, friends and family members. more than ever before, as a new parent i have experienced how meaningful it can be to have strong and supportive friends and family in your life and i'd like to be that for others. sending handwritten letters and thoughtful packages is something that i always love doing (what more could brighten someone's day than a beautiful, unexpected package from a friend arriving in the mailbox?) and i want to do more of it this year.

here is another one of the sweaters i knit for ethan before he was born. it's an old lion brand pattern that i made for my cousin's baby years ago. i really like the kimono style, but the way this one ties is a little annoying. i think i'd find a different kimono pattern in the future. i used a super soft cotton/tencel yarn that i had in my stash (on ravelry, here). oh, and the booties. when i first made them at the beginning of winter, i thought they were adorable, but i wasn't sure how practical they would be. well, he's worn them almost every day of this frigid season, and i've now made two other pairs for more of the new babes in my life this year (on ravelry, here). like i've said, this baby is definitely not wanting for handknit sweaters, or anything else. i already have two more that i've finished for him, not to mention my mom and others who are keeping him well stocked for this insane winter and many more to come, i'm sure.

so that's the news from here. cold days, a little bit better sleep and more free time, and more intention in my days. how about you all? what's happening out there?

xo