The only ones missing in these pics are me and Rudy! And that's a new slipcover I picked up at the JobLot for thirty bucks last week. I am not crazy about the color, but the functionality can't be beat!
Also, note the classic gender preferences evident in the dress of the children. Both are wearing their current favorite outfits, for sure.
Phew. Thank goodness! We were out of power for a bit of a while there. What a drag! Here are some pictures from yesterdays ice storm...
These were from the morning. It's so crazy how every single detail gets encased in ice. really beautiful. (if you're not stuck out in it, that is.)
I took these later in the day, as sunset neared. These are looking west, towards curtis farm.
I leave on saturday, feb 10, early in the morning. I return on saturday, feb 17, at around 9:45 in the morning. It will be so good to see you all!
I'm pretty pleased with how things are turning out. I'm going to put both doors on the cozyroom again, which will turn it into a cozy little den. Also, if you're in the living room, the desire is there to close the door near the stairs to block the sights and sounds of whatevers on the tv in the other room. Same with if you're in the kitchen and want to listen to the stereo while someone else watches tv. and for an even cozier private evening, shut both the doors!
I do need to bring a phone into the living room. That's going to be the place to get away to talk on the phone. the couch in the cozy room used to be where I'd go, and now that privacy is gone! Also when I look at a picture of it, the rooms still look the same to me. but I know obviously that big changes are occuring. Feels really good.
We are doing just fine with the television, by the way. Already I notice that maggie launches fewer battles of will, was much more imaginative in her play, etc etc. And I think it was good to remove the tv from it's original room, because if we'd pulled the plug and then left the television set in the living room, still the focal point, we woulda felt chumped maybe. now it seems like the living room is on it's way towards the focal point being other human faces in the room. It's definitely a room to sit down and enjoy each others company. The room is desperate for a paint job and window treatments, I know, I know. I'm still trying to see how much change I can create without spending any money at all. but that's going to have to come soon, don't you think? also a slip cover for that blue couch. Since it won't be taking such a beating every day now I can fit it with a slip cover and not have to tuck and pull every ten minutes.
We've killed our television. I feel sort of sick to my stomach! isn't that funny. This next week will be interesting. If you know us, you probably think/know that we watch a lot of television. Well now we've gone and done it. We cancelled our Directv, and will keep our tivo for now. Turns out we get the local abc, nbc, cbs and pbs from boston right out of thin air. it's a fuzzy picture, but definitely something to stare at when we need a fix. It's like dramatically reducing the nicotine content of our cigarettes. :-)
My only thing is I love to watch "The Office". Without a doubt, my favorite show. Thank goodness that's on nbc because I would be hurting for certain. I don't think I'll miss The Daily Show or even the Colbert report. I feel like the internet is such a great resource for seeing the funny stuff, and many of the bloggers will post "here's the clip in case you missed it" for other various visual input I may miss.
I'll also miss shows like "How it's Made" and "Modern Marvels", and the Science channel in particular. But thank goodness I have one of the best pbs stations in the country to watch! it's funny. One of my goals for 2007 is to reduce and simplify and this is certainly that! still retaining the essential but cutting away a lot of flab. It feels good so far!
So what did we do. Well, we moved the entertainment center from the guest room in the basement up to the playroom. I made another brutal edit of the toys in the playroom. Hauled a bunch more stuff up to the bonus space, which is really turning into a phenomenal storage area as I worth through the contents of our household and fine tune and edit. I only wish there was a more convenient way to access it. Anyway. Jeff and I split the work up real good and between the two of us, brought the tv out of the living room and into the playroom. so now, in the playroom, you can watch the four channels we get, the dvd player, and the vcr. I may or may not put the doors back on and turn it into a super cozy room again. We also hauled that big red entertainment center from the living room out to the porch. This week I will photograph it and try to give it away via craigslist. There is a big comfy chair that has been upstairs for the last several years, and we brought that downstairs to sit where the tv used to be. Now I see that the windows are filthy and so have to figure out some way to get them clean from the outside. I see climbing a ladder in my future! But my sister marcia says that nothing makes a house sparkle like cleaning your windows, and she's right. Especially with this low winter light and no leaves on the trees.
By the way, we are beginning to freak out over here regarding global warming. holy cow. it was 70 degrees this weekend! Now I enjoy balmy weather as much as the next guy, but that just ain't right! it just isn't right. I was talking about it with Henry yesterday, saying that I will be so curious to see what the world is like when he is as old as I am right now, in the year 2036. I sort of apologized for the fact that my generation and the ones before me created the problem and yadda yadda yadda. He was like, "yeah...I'm excited to see about that too, see what kinds of new inventions there are!" and then began to describe for me what sort of gun he would invent that would somehow solve the global warming problem. Something about shooting the Co2 out of your state and into another or something. So we got to talk about how it's everybody's problem and that when we say "global warming" we're talking about the entire globe, the earth. it was good stuff.
Maggie is turning into a disney princess-aholic. anything to do with the disney princesses, she is all over. They are both boy and girl, that is for sure! we were at lowes on friday and jeff showed her a disney princess lamp that has the different princess ladies twirling around on rotating platforms when you press the button or the alarm goes off or whatever. She wanted it so bad it turned in to this giant emotional extreme situation for her - at one point she suggested that maybe we had more money in the van that we could go get to pay for the lamp! real tears and everything!
I'll try to post pictures as soon as things shape up. I have to run to the grocery store now, or at least check in downstairs. bye now!
This morning, the kids and I were out in the porch, enjoying the balmy rainy morning. it was beautiful. Maggie was trying to order us around and I was trying to order her around and she was not having it. At one point I said to her, "watch!" and she actually covered her eyes while saying no! I really had to laugh. she is so consumed with power struggle and control that her first response to my asking her to watch while I do something for her is to cover her eyes! it was very funny to me.
Maggie's hair is getting long, and Henry looks so much older to me lately! Of course, this is a posed shot, and he is meant to look very serious. That could be it. Those are some big blue eyes, huh?
This morning I dreamt I was leaving for a trip, so was rushing around trying to find everything I needed to pack (a classic anxiety dream of mine) when I was stopped by a "BEEP BEEP" sound everywhere I went. Like the sound of a truck backing up. The dream turned into me tearing apart everything I could in order to halt that infernal beeping! Finally I had to leave for the trip, and when the beeping followed me onto the boat, everyone went crazy from the sound! I have a specific image of rifling through a tool box to find wire cutters and then closing down on random black wires in attempt to stop the beeping. The dream ended when I was poked awake by jeff who told me that the alarm had been going off for eight whole minutes!
So then my morning was a bit of a hard starter. Clearly I had been deeply asleep, and then to add that stressful dream on top of it! blech. I did okay though, I pulled out of it.
I think I was so soundly asleep because I took the feather bed off of our mattress yesterday. We have a really nice feather bed that fits our california king sized bed. I found it at Marshall's on clearance for $32 when I was hugely pregnant with Maggie. I slept like a bird in a cozy nest for the rest of my pregnancy, let me tell you. Even loaned it to lanie when she was big with Nora. The feather bed goes between the mattress itself and the mattress pad. And it shifts something awful. I got tired of having to completely remake the bed every morning, pulling off the mattress pad, yanking the feather bed into position, replacing the mattress pads, the sheet, etc. So just the regular mattress must've been what my sleeping self had been searching for.
Yesterday maggie and I worked on our bonus space, the unfinished area above the house. Turned it into the K**** Family Clubhouse! I slipped the feather bed inside an old duvet cover and positioned it in an area near the one window in the room. I'm bringing toys we're not ready to get rid off yet up there and so it turned into a great little play space for Maggie while I worked in other corners. I hope to recreate that same scenario later today.
I'll go take some pictures of the kids bedrooms today, and also the bonus space, so you can see where it is I toil all day long. In other news, I am hopeful for a date with my husband on saturday, and looking very much forward to my neice Brooke coming to visit us the beginning of February! We will be staying overnight in Boston the first night she arrives, so that should be REAL FUN. And I'm thinking of having a party on Saturday, February 3rd if you're lucky enough to have us K*****s of Wilton in your daily orbit... more details soon!
I read somewhere that each room ought to have it's own trash receptacle. Every room in your house has the potential to generate trash. if you don't have a place to put it in that room, you are either wasting time hauling it out of the room or you are leaving tiny plastic clothes tags on the windowsill or empty granola bar wrappers here and there, etc. Do you have a wastebasket in every room of your house? I don't.
For my upstairs, at this point, I have a large garbage can in the bathroom and it all ends up there. And if it doesn't, I take a grocery sack and make a trash-pass through all the bedrooms and then bring it downstairs to the kitchen trash. When I cleaned out my closet, one thing I began to stock in there full time is a bunch of plastic grocery sacks. I keep them in a basket and whenever I need to bag something up, BAM. DONE. Having a stash of these bags right there in my closet has been such a smart move, if only because I have the ability to execute those "I need to bag these clothes up for goodwill" thoughts nearly immediately. This morning I bagged up a poopy diaper in one, gathered trash in another and bagged up old clothes in a third!
But I do see the sense in having trash cans in every room, especially the kids and their bedrooms as they grow older and generate trash. In Henry's room especially. The makeover I gave his room before Christmas resulted in a great desk for him to sit at and hatch his various plans at. If he had a trash can there, the various wrappers and dud drawings could end up there instead of piled on his desk, with "nowhere" to put them. He could also use his own laundry basket. Right now he undresses in our bedroom before he brushes his teeth for bed, and it's beginning to be time to give him his own private space for that. He is either snickering at me while I am getting dressed or the excitement of being noody-toody in front of the rest of us results in lots of exciting tearing around the upstairs, trying to get someone (anyone!) to react to something (anything!)
It's a tricky thing, trying to instill modesty and a respect for privacy in a kid without passing on ones own skewed issues around nudity and intimacy, you know what I mean?
It's a beautifully warm day today, I think we will be going for a walk after school...
and how are you, and how was yours... I am fine, mine was great. The last of our holiday guests left this afternoon, Jeff having driven them up to Maine himself. (He'll be back tomorrow.) So now it's just me and the kids sort of enjoying the quiet but missing the hubub all at the same time. This christmas was definitely one to remember, having Grammi and Papa here was really special. And I'm so glad lanie and cassidy and nora were able to stay as long as they did, we all had a great time.
Here are a few christmas pictures. My picture taking was spotty this year. I didn't get any pictures of henry, or me or jeff, or grammi, or even lanie! not off my camera anyway. Cassidy took lots with her camera, she agreed to put them on flickr or something for me. I'll share that link as it becomes available...
This is a special something Maggie got from her Grammi and Papa. Apparently she spied it upon entering a gift shop and was so drawn to it Grammi had to get it for her. She sure loves this aquarium. The fish 'swim' by on a neverending roll of clear plastic behind a glass front, complete with backlight and air filter bubble sounds. 
This is a collection of body armor Henry got from our good friend Jon. Jon really knows how to please Henry in the gift department, and he is so thrilled to have all this great stuff to dress up in. Jon sent him a junior football chest pad thingie, something called a waist protector, shin guards, knee pads and ice hockey gloves. Henry added his own light saber and night vision dart shooting goggles and a superhero was born!
as you can see, Henry wore his gear straight through breakfast... 
and lunch!
Here's Phil and Nora, look especially cute...
We decorated cookies on Christmas Eve... Jeff made the "I love Susie" one, I made the santa face, and Maggie did the more abstract one...
Maggie got a little Hello Kitty lip balm and mirror compact from Santa. Here she is applying her lipstick.
and here is one I took of Nora the other day. I think the light makes her skin look gorgeous...
that's all for now! we'll try to get back to a more regular posting schedule now that the holidays are behind us, mm'kay? and now a special shout out to my momma: I updated mine, now you update yours!
xxx ooo
Another thing that's peaceful to look at. I love the center hallway transition from my kitchen to my living room.
Maggie has been crashing where she falls lately. I think she looks especially peaceful here.
Here is my little shadow, fixing herself a peanut butter and jelly. But only after insisting on deciding exactly what she wanted to wear for the 'at home' portion of her day. Cute, huh? 
Here is the christmas gift I made for my brother in law Phil. I really like how it turned out. It's a corkboard! I've had these animal lotto cards for some time now and have gradually been figuring out what to do with them. I've almost used them all up now! To make this I trimmed the pictures and rubber cemeted them to the corkboard in the pattern you see. Then I glued navy blue ribbon down at the edges of the cards, and a strip of ivory ribbon at the top. I like to whip up handmade things for Phil because he's so talented and crafty himself. Last year he made us this gorgeous birdfeeder:
Here's our tree, got it put up over the weekend. I just love trees that we cut down ourselves, something about the shape of them and the droop of the branches seems so gorgeous and colonial to me. And I am also appreciating how our christmas tree looks pretty much the same each year, although our tree looks like no one elses I know. Here are some other pictures of trees past...
This is another of those photo groups over at flickr.com that always interest me. I don't think I'll add my picture to the group, but I will tell YOU, dear reader, what's in my bag...
OK, so this green bag is one I get a lot of compliments on. I remember not being thrilled with the shade of green, but really loving the functionality of the interior. I like a colored lining, so my black wallet is easily spied. $12.99 at Marshalls.
Then we have my phone, complete with a MacGyvered wrist strap that only serves to freak me out when it brushes against my neck while I'm on the phone. My wallet, with the same dollar bill that's been in there all week. Hand lotion (although I miss last years hand lotion that went with me in my bag. Body Butter from The Body Shop. Shea flavor. Yum! An emergency diaper, a random grocery list, breath mints, my keys, my travel bottle of pills, lipstick, my preferred tooth picks, a post it note with an address on where to ship something I sold on craigslist last week, and, lastly, a pen from the Side Trax, my favorite place to eat in the world, located in Greefield, NH. Have I taken you there before? :-)
To shut your mind, heart, imagination to the sufferings of others is to begin slowly but inexorably to die. It is to cease by inches from being human, to become in the end capable of nothing generous or unselfish, or sometimes capable of anything, however terrible.
- John Austin Baker, Bishop of Salisbury
OMG look at this picture I just dug up. This picture was apparently taken on our wedding anniversary back in 2004! May 15.
This is a little something I made this weekend. Lascia gave me a ton of sparkly beads and they are so yummy to look at, I had to do something with them. It’s a spider, in case you hadn’t figured it out yet. The black blob is supposed to be a mouth, but I nudged it befor it dried and now it’s more of a black blob. Oh well.
This weekend was pretty good! On Saturday Lascia and her daughter Emily came over for some ornament making, and then Jeff and Henry went to a Manchester Monarchs ice hockey game on Saturday night. At first Henry didn’t want to go. He can be like a dog who hates to take a bath when it’s time to leave the house. A real homebody, he. But they went and had fun.
I asked Sean and Christine from down the road to watch Maggie for me on Saturday night and went out for a drink with Lascia and Bob and some friends of theirs. For Lascia’s 30th birthday celebration. Very good times. Lots of laughing and growing closer. So good to make new friends! I love it.
Sunday morning, we went to cut down our Christmas tree. We go every year with Matt and Nicole. Nicole’s belly is really growing! She’s either further along than she thinks, grows huge babies right from the start, or has more than one in there. My goodness! What a gorgeous pregnant woman she is. My camera was dead, so no pictures. boo...
The hard drive on Jeff's laptop died, so he and Maggie headed out to Nashua to get another one yesterday. When they got home, Henry and I gave her the kind of warm welcome she gives any of us when we come home. Lots of celebrating and hugs and kisses and cheers, etc. She loved it. At one point she looked up at Jeff as if to say, "are you seeing this?!" That girl is super cute.
Okedoke, I have a gazillion things to do so I'd better run. I need to carve out a specific time of day when I work on entries for this blog, because believe it or not, I have a lot to say, if given the chance! I think about all the topics I'd like to pontificate on, and then when I actually get a minute to post, I invariably end up coughing out a giant wad of "did this, plan to do that, here's a pic of this, hope that happens, oop, gotta go!" and leave it at that.
one other pic. Lascia gave me a bookcase they don't need anymore, so after I painted up the downstairs hallway last week, I incorporated it into the area opposite the former birdcage. I really like the idea of a table and a lamp and a mirror in that room, but I want to ultimately upgrade everything you see in this picture. But I like what I've got going as far as a proof of concept, you know? And I was able to get halfway to the goal without spending any money, just pulling pieces from here and there. So that's good.
I am usually quite bored on Wednesdays. Mondays I usually get started on laundry right away, and then pull the house together and potentially begin to tackle some sort of project. This Monday it was painting the downstairs hallway area where the stairs are. Yesterday I felt like I'd worked hard the day before, plus the dump was open and I picked up a ton of old magazines, plus jeff was due home late from work. So the day yawned in front of me and I ended up not doing much of anything except plowing through the magazines. And today....! Today I'm sick of it all. Nothing to get inspired about, nothing to "do" besides more housework, more laundry, etc. The only thing to do is to distract and/or scold maggie from her current obsession of dispensing any and every cream/gel/soap hand pump that she can get her hands on. Right now in fact she's at my side, demanding, "LOTION! LOTION! LOTION!"
I think what I'll do is, I'll go play with maggie. That's important work, too. I get so used to working around her that I often forget to work WITH her. the laundry can still get done, the house will only get slightly messier, and it'll help her to stay out of trouble.
I joined a photo group at flickr.com called "Corners of My Home". There are over 1,600 people signed up and everyone posts photos of a corner in their house. I have seen this on a few of the blogs I read and really enjoy it. Then I saw a picture I took of my kitchen sink a couple years ago and decided I should add that feature to my blog, too. so look for it soon!
this was forwarded it me via email, I don't actually know the person who owns this tattoo. funny though, huh?
Well here it is. Nothing too fancy, but it was pretty. I like the pink color of the cake, but I wish I'd stuck to just white icing. that was my plan, but henry was looking for something to do, so I let him add color. and I got the D in Happy Birthday backwards. did you know that cake decorators have a scrabble tile holder like contraption that you can slide raised letters on to? Then you stamp the top of the cake with the letters and pipe icing over it. the goopy bow at the top of the cake is from where I dragged my sleeve across the top of the cake. I didn't get a picture of the side of the cake, but it has a swag design going around the top and vertical stripes where the swag meets the top. Red Hot Imperials complete the design.
Earlier this week Henry had an appointment with our dental hygenist, Carrie. Earlier this year, when we were in Seattle for three weeks this summer, Henry's cousin Brooke took x-rays of his teeth as part of her training to be a dental hygenist, and so we brought those with us to show Carrie and Dr. Wilson, our family dentist.
Apparently Henry has big teeth and we should expect "some crowding" and a need for othodontics with him. This is no surprise! Carrie also thought she saw an "extra tooth" visible in his x-ray, near the bottom left of his nose or something. She wanted to hang on to the x-ray so that dr. wilson could take it to some orthodontics conference he's going to soon so he could get some second opinions. Not out of any concern, more of a 'do you see what I see?' kind of thing. Carrie told Henry is was called a "Supernumery" and he caught my eye, obviously pleased. like he'd been given a super power or something. "Super!" he said, giving me a thumbs up. too cute.
I'm reading "Down Came the Rain - My Journey Through Postpartum Depression" by Brooke Shields. Picked it up at the library. Whoo, can this girl tell it like it IS. This book will help many many women. I'm so lucky I didn't suffer too much from ppd with either of my kids. I cried here and there, and definitely felt overwhelmed after the birth of number one, but when the girl came along, I felt terrific and bounded out of bed every morning with hope and purpose for months afterward. And I got to have the birth experience I wanted (exit via the usual route, no surprises, wonderful nurses, my mom was there, etc) both times. So. Very grateful, to say the least.
I am also really hearing what Brooke Shields has to say about her experience. If I haven't felt everything she felt, I know some woman who did, you know? She's also very revealing, and lays it all out there for dear reader:
I kept leaning over and smelling her to see if I could recognize her scent or anything familiar about her. In a strange way, she seemed to know me muuch better than I did her. She was able to look directly at me, as if she had everything all figured out. I felt self-conscious when alone with her. She seemed pure and honest and raw, and it unsettled me. I tried to talk to her when we were alone.
"Baby girl, please be patient with me. I think I'm having a hard time here, and I don't want you to be sad because of it. please love me. I promise I'll try to ge tbetter."
