Here's what we are up to. Legos. All the time.  Unity's been selling Girl Scout Cookies, which is lots of fun. That is a picture of her reading one of my favorite books from childhood, All Of A Kind Family. It's a series about a Jewish immigrant family living in New York  in the early nineteen hundreds.  So good! Unity put the blanket over her head so you just get to look at the book. 

The garden catalogs have been coming. It's a good reminder that Spring is not too far away. Chris and I have to sit down and have a garden planning date. I'm excited. I do like having excuses to be cozy in the winter, and curl up with coffee, books, and rain. ( Brixton took that slightly fuzzy photo of me.)But it's nice to dream about a full growing garden and beach dates too. 

weekend

It's been cold and clear and sunny here- bright sharp days that remind me of winter in the mid-west. 

We had a family date on Friday, using one of our Chinook book coupons to go to a lovely Thai restaurant. We managed to get through the meal with only one child having to take a walk outside while waiting for food and only one child having to be reminded that we don't sleep with our heads on the table in restaurants, no matter how full we may be. 

So, pretty successful in other words.

Unity had a gymnastics meet on Saturday. Her team did well enough to advance to the championships next weekend so she is excited about that. I wasn't sure how she would do in this "pre-competitive" track but it's been good so far. 

We have a new houseplant to add to the botanical collection. This one is a sundew, and while it is fun and interesting, we are also hoping it will be a fruit fly predator as well. 

Also this weekend, Brixton and I made cookies while Unity had a friend over and Unity read all of Houseboat Girl by Lois Lenski. I adored this author as a kid, and read through a whole shelf of her books at my local library. Seeing Unity enjoy the books I loved as a kid has been something that I've been looking forward to since the day I found out I was pregnant. 

I've been a little nonplussed with some of the books she's brought home from her school library. There's a whole fairy series that is stretched a bit thin. Titles include Caylee the carnival fairy and Georgia the guinea pig fairy. She also brought home a book that was all about the beauty shop and boys. I'm  not going to tell her what she can and can't read. I certainly know that can backfire. There's a famous story in my family about how I was told not to read my grandmother's romance novel and promptly stayed up all night to read it after everyone else was asleep. 

But, I am glad to steer her towards books that I find enriching and I love when she loves them too. Bonding over books is one of my favorite ways to connect. 

Portrait of today

We grew those beauties in the garden this summer. They are sweet meat squash, a type of hubbard. Two plants only produced those three squash but they are big. I'm roasting one right now and it took my a while to cut it up and scrape it out. I'm really looking forward to squash soup though, it's one of my favorite fall dinners. 

It's the season of curling up with cookbooks and trying to figure out which sock pattern to knit. It's the season of spelling lists in the morning and math problems at night. It's putting on sweaters in the foggy morning and t-shirts in the sunny afternoons. 

I've been realizing that our family has firmly moved into the elementary school stage of life. It's confusing because Brixton is still in preschool. But we really are pretty much done with the preschool stage of potty training and learning to hold a pencil, and have moved into the carpool shuffling to activities stage, which is so fun and fulfilling for parents. I mean, I am glad and grateful that they have passions to pursue, that we have the means to support them in that. I am. 

It's just the constant driving around that starts to get to me. 

I'm trying to find a balance with our calendar, that leaves room for family time and down time and also has space for all four of us to pursue at least one thing that's important to us. For Unity, it's gymnastics. For Brixton, it's drums. For Chris, it's his volunteer work for the local radio station. For me, it's my exercise classes at the Y, and my committee work at our Quaker Meeting. Sometimes it seems insane to think that we can all do our individual projects and still have time to be together. And some weeks are better than others, but we really try to say no to some things to create those pockets of down time. And we are still able to eat dinner together nearly every night, which is a priority to me. 

And I want to leave room in our lives for big picture stuff. For remembering and making room for things outside our privileged busy family. Whether it's bringing a meal to a family who just adopted a child, or going to a community meeting, or donating to an organization doing good work. At the end of the day, it all matters. The big stuff and the little stuff, the routines and the unusual. The pages in my planner that add up to our week, our season right now, the shape of our lives in the world.  

Buddies

We had some friends over last night while their parents went out to a movie. All the kids played together well. There was a drum session and books, and lots of Legos and dancing in the garden. 

Yarn along- the never ending shawl

             I haven't done a Yarn along in a while. I've been working on the same shawl for months. It's the Follow your arrow knit a long that a lot of people were doing, but I think they are mostly finished by now. Oh well. I am enjoying it but the rows are so long and I really do have to concentrate that I find it's not a project that I can slip in my bag and work on while the kids are at swim lessons.

A friend gave me this book for my birthday, I have just started it but so far I really like it.



More knitting and reading projects here. 

Reading with Grandma Ann

                                 I have no idea where my kids got their interest in books. If only they
                                 had some role models.

More books, more stitches

Chris and Unity have decided to start a sewing project together. We spent a bunch of time in the fabric store this weekend choosing a pattern and fabric she liked. It's going to be a fun dress! They are still at the beginning stages of washing and cutting and piecing but they are having so much fun. 

                           We acquired some more bookshelves. Chris says that getting new bookshelves to deal with our book problem is like building a new highway to solve congestion. But I had some boxes of beloved treasures from when I was growing up and I wanted to unpack them. Look, the shelves aren't even full. Yet.

Can I tell you how much love and joy I feel pulling out those dear worn covers and smelling their old dusty dreamy smell and being reminded of all the hours well spent? I was inspired to read Unity and Brixton the first three chapters of Sideways Stories From Wayside School at bedtime tonight and they loved it. 

Passing it on. 

what a bunch of

                                        fancy

 

                                         bookish

                                      pickle eaters!

August Appreciations part 4

12. Blueberry cornbread muffins. So yum, especially with the tons of sweet juicy berries that are at the farmers market right now.

13. Chris's ability to look at our old doors (that he took off the formerly dank basement closet) and envision a work table. Now he can putter with his scooter parts in ergonomic peace. Gotta love living with an engineer.

14. Unity has branched out with the pattern blocks, and decided she doesn't need patterns. She'll make her own. Love that girl's creativity.

15. Brixton reading to Papa. "and den da wabit, he goed to da house."

16. The gorgeous weather we've been having. Hot,sunny, beachy summer weather. Of course the weather report did say that Seattle summer has now peaked. But we have been soaking it up.

on the upswing

So we have spent the past week recovering from a fun little ditty called Hand, Foot and Mouth disease.  It's actually pretty mild and it sounds like almost all kids in preschool get it at some point so I guess it's good we're getting it out of the way.

But Brixton and I have been in the house all of last week, keeping his germs to ourselves. And that has a way of making a parent a little insane. Brixton can very confidently tell you that there are a lot of different kinds of familys, and  show which is his left foot and which is his right, and do the little Pookie dance  because those are the three books he's wanted to read all week long. By Friday I was almost delirious. But, his scabs are leaving and we are just about ready to reenter the world. Hallelujah!

Happy Birthday Chris!!!

Happy Birthday Chris! We love you love you love you.