quote for the week (!)

I'm still here! I know I've been awfully quiet as of late. I've had a tremendously stressful couple of weeks.

Some days I feel like I need to remind myself that it's ok that all I did was 'just breathe' for the day. Other days I feel like I need to tell myself that that is all I should do for the day!

I wanted to come back to this space and tell you how wonderfully things were going. How I've gotten my rhythm back. How I've been crafting and cleaning and cooking and delighting in every day life. But that's not entirely true. There have been moments of that, close to full days of that - but mostly I'm still just working on getting by.

I've wanted to come here - for many, many reasons. To force myself to reconnect, to pay attention, to take it slow, to savor it, to capture it, to write it down.

Some days I have so much to say that the very thought of coming here to get it out is exhausting. Other days I have less than nothing to say. Or things that are so dreary that I wouldn't want to write about them anyway.

I know this is nothing new, but my plan (haha) is to come back to this space more. This week. Even if it's just with snapshots, because honestly, I'm tired of my days blurring together. Work, sleep, cook, kids, work, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah.

But enough about blah, blah, blah. Overall, I am doing well. Exhausted. But mostly well. The baby is growing. I am certainly growing! Spring is coming. There is so much goodness right around the corner.

I am so ready for it. See you soon!

Spring quote for the week

"March bustles in on windy feet
And sweeps my doorstep and my street.
She washes and cleans with pounding rains,
Scrubbing the earth of winter stains.
She shakes the grime from carpet green
Till naught but fresh new blades are seen.
Then, house in order, all neat as a pin,
She ushers gentle springtime in."
-  Susan Reiner, Spring Cleaning

Happy Spring!
I would love to be able to say to you that I've been away because I've been oh, so busy. That I've been reading books and knitting washclothes. Sewing baby blankets, baking goodies, planting seeds. That I've been dusting away cobwebs and taking walks and basking in the short, sweet bursts of sunshine that we get.

But I haven't. I've been wasting away time online. Playing games. Taking naps. Running never ending errands. Being still.

I haven't been here, because I haven't been doing much and quite honestly, I have nothing to say.


I've been hibernating. I keep trying to change that. I keep setting goals and making plans and writing lists. But then, most often, I just sit.


I'm going to just go with it. Do what I can, when I can. These are the last few weeks of quiet and nothingness I will have for quite a long while.

I'll be in and out of here still. Hopefully more in than out as the weeks go on. There are things to do - seeds to start, diets that are changing, projects to be done. But I'm not going to rush them along. When I do finally start moving again, I imagine that the words will start moving here as well.

Until then, enjoy the spring winds, rain and those increasing bursts of sunshine!

quote for the week

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.
                                                                   ~ Walt Disney

We spent the last week at Disney. It's not someplace I thought we'd ever take the kids, but we did and they loved it. We all loved it - it was a wonderful winter reprieve from our NY snow and cold.

Now it's back to home and work and planning for the spring and for a baby!

quote for the week

I need to concentrate on these words this week. And next week. The week after too. And on and on.
My house, my life is driving me crazy lately. Too.much.clutter. Too many things in our space and in my head and filling my days. It's time to bare bones it.
We need to make room for the new baby. For the things we love. For ourselves. For breathing.

I really do (for real!) plan on coming to this space more. I've been spending too much useless time online. Playing games, chatting. These things are good (for me) in small doses, but sometimes they begin to take over way too much of my very precious time. I'm restricting my internet time starting this week, allowing myself a few minutes each day to touch base with people, to check blogs (because honestly, they are a wonderful way to start my day) to write in my own blog (to get a check on where I am, where I'm going). And that's it. Slow down on the mindless TV and internetting.
I've finally got most of my energy back, but very little motivation. I think I'm going to have to slowly force the motivation to return, and I can't very well do that while I'm wasting so much time accomplishing nothing.

Household decluttering starts this week too. In the most painful place. My books. Ouch. I just ordered several new ones - it's time to let go of the ones I don't love (and don't use!) to make room for more relevant and needed ones.

I don't know if it's nesting already kicking in, the urge for some early spring cleaning or my frustration at my total lack of motivation and progress. But I am ready for change. Now.

quote for the week.

"Procrastination isn't the problem. It's the solution. It's the universe's way of saying stop, slow down, you move too fast. "
                            - Ellen DeGeneres 


I like this view of it! This pregnancy is kicking my butt. I thought once I hit 12 weeks I'd be normal feeling again - ha! 

Though I might quite well be stuck in a cycle now of: I wasn't eating well or exercising because I was sick and tired. And now I feel sick and tired because I haven't been eating well or exercising. 

I keep thinking that I'll come back to this space, you know, tomorrow. Then of course it's tomorrow and tomorrow again - and again.

Quite honestly, I haven't been doing much at all. We did go to NYC to visit my sister in law just after Christmas for a couple of days (and got an inside tour of the google offices - amazing!). 

I was in bed by 9pm, go me! That seems to be my new routine. Only now I'm back working until 9 so we'll see how this goes! On NYE I was exhausted. I figured it was pregnancy and the trip home from NYC that morning. We had some friends over but just bummed around, low key. Didn't follow up on any of the hoped to be traditions from last year. Tree still hasn't been burned. Achievements and goals are still undocumented. Well, there's always next year. Turns out though - that my exhaustion that night was the beginning of a nasty head cold that almost 3 weeks later I'm just getting over.


Good news is I've been able to get up and cleaning a little bit. Cleaned our room, and almost caught back up on laundry. Gave the kitchen a good scrubbing. I've even been cooking a little again. 


So really, there hasn't been much to post about here. My life is pretty slow. Pretty quiet right now. I'm still working on not feeling guilty about it. Though I do think that quote is true. Like I said a few weeks ago (and I'm still trying to convince myself!) maybe it's a good thing. Clearly, my body needs the rest. Maybe my mind needs the rest. It's not like I've been utilizing all this down time reading books or anything that might be a little productive. 

However, I don't want this to turn into another 6 months of lazing about. I can rest and still be productive. Maybe I can't get done all the things I did before but I can do somethings. 

So. You all know how well I do at setting and keeping goals (stop laughing). I think I'm going to set itty bitty tiny goals for myself week by week. Little goals. And maybe I'll surprise myself and want to do more.

This week:
While I'm feeling lazy: pick up the darn knitting!, meal plan for next week
While I'm feeling motivated: do a load of laundry, vacuum, do at least one make-ahead cooking for the lazy days. 


See. Tiny goals. Notice I didn't say make progress on knitting. Or do all the laundry. Itty bitty.


And maybe I'll even see you again tomorrow! Happy Sunday!

quote for the week

Christmas - that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance - a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved.
                                                           ~Augusta E. Rundel

It was a bit of a different Christmas this year. Because of my first trimester sickness and laziness, there were quite a few things that got left undone. A lot more sleeping and a lot less creating and celebrating. I was feeling a little blue over the things that got left undone and unmade. Over the things that didn't work out - like every cookie we made that ended up burned or crumbled  or stuck to the pan. Over the traditions that had to be changed this year, for various reasons.

But somehow no one noticed the things left undone. So we ate a few less cookies. The floors went unmopped and the laundry hasn't been put away. It still all came together, beautifully. Quietly. Blissfully.

It was a lesson in letting go - and one I suppose I need to get used to over the next few months. It's been a long time since there has been a newborn in the house but I'm pretty sure that there will be many, many things left undone over the next year.

So even with me just getting over my first trimester symptoms, The Husband recovering from knee surgery, my youngest sick with a stomach bug for the last several days and my oldest leaving this afternoon for a week with his fathers side of the family out of state - well, it's not quite what was in my Christmas dreams. Though it was beautiful all the same and I'm sure this Christmas will weave it's way into some of our favorite family memories too. Hours and hours spent playing new board games, and wrapped in the love and warmth of new quilts from Nana.

quote for the week (and something new!)

What is Christmas?  It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future.  It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace.  

                                                                       ~Agnes M. Pahro

 

 

 

 

 

 

This holiday season has been a little different than the last few. In some ways it's been crazier, in some ways it's been slower. A lot of things are going undone and some traditions have been put on hold. 

 

Other traditions like cutting our tree down on the coldest snowiest day of the year, seem to still be in place. It was cold. Really cold. And there was at least a half dozen times I stepped into a surprise mound of snow that swallowed me up to my waist and I had to roll out of. 

 

 I am definitely feeling some tenderness and nostalgia for past holidays. I feel like I've been sort of limping through this holiday season. And I have. 

I mentioned a bit ago that I've been napping more. Letting some things go (like the dishes and the laundry!) I've been spending a lot of time away from this space while I slow down.

 

And I've also been spending a lot of time planning and hoping for the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baby number three will be joining our family right around July 2nd 2011!

 

 

And now that my first trimester is coming to a close, I plan on spending much more time back in this space very soon!

Merry Christmas!

quote for the week.

Play is the purist, the most spiritual, product of man at this stage, and it is at once the prefiguration and imitation of the total human life,--of the inner, secret, natural life in man and in all things.

It produces, therefore, joy, freedom, satisfaction, repose within and without, peace with the world. The springs of all good rest within it and go out from it.

-Freidrich Froebel 

quote for the week

Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit.  Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.  ~St Francis de Sales



well, hello there. I know I've been quiet this past week. I imagine I'll be quiet still for at least a few more days. 

We've been living very slowly, very quietly. There seems a bit of chaos in our lives, in the lives of those we love. We've been taking time to play games, cook together, snuggle, nap, watch movies and watch the bread rise in front of the woodstove.

I normally need to talk everything out, in excruciating detail. Right now, I'm feeling the need to be quiet. To be still. To not just keep, but first to find that inner peace. 

quote for the week.

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; 

we must die to one life before we can enter another.  

~Anatole France

 image source

I keep typing out posts, and blogger keeps eating them. It's getting quite frustrating. This post got eaten somewhere between pressing publish and view published post. So here's the cliff notes. 

We are going to be facing quite a few changes here. I'll share them with you soon, but not yet.



I try not to rush the seasons, I am very much aware at how quickly the years can speed by. I try to embrace and savor every season. The scents and sights, the flavors.


That's not always easy. I was cursing our long winter when it snowed (a lot!) on Mothers Day last year, but then soon whining about the heat during our very long and very hot summer. Often enough though, it seems the seasons begin to turn just as I'm longing for the next. When fall began this year, I couldn't imagine wanting it to end. I think the same thing every year, since autumn is by far my favorite time, but this year especially. I was dreading the inevitable and too quick return to winter. We have long winters.


Yet here I am with the last leaf having barely touched the ground, and I'm ready for the snow. I'm ready for snowstorms and sledding and hats and mittens and cocoa and woodstoves and cozy-ing under blankets and slowing down and the silence and calm that winter brings. 


This winter, I'm especially ready for the opportunity to slow down. To nap. To dream and plan. To get ready for all the seasons ahead.

image source

quote for the week

It's Halloween! It's Halloween!
The moon is full and bright
And we shall see what can't be seen
On any other night.
Skeletons and ghosts and ghouls,
Grinning goblins fighting duels,
Werewolves rising from their tombs,
Witches on their magic brooms.
In masks and gown we haunt the street
And knock on doors for trick or treat.
Tonight we are the king and queen,
For oh tonight it's Halloween! 

- Jack Prelutsky

quote for the week.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.  

~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

 

 

It has been an especially trying week. I posted about it the other day, but took the post back down soon after. It was too personal, even for me and I am the Queen of Overshare.

 

I have been forced to question and reassess many things in my life. I've been having a sort of early mid life crisis I think. Suddenly I'm not quite sure who I am, where I am going or even where I have been. It is a very unsettling feeling.

 

In the middle of my pseudo-crisis, my sister called me with a real life crisis of her own. She is six months pregnant and her boyfriend of 6 years has decided that he isn't happy. They just moved into a new apartment a month ago, they haven't even finished unpacking. 

 

She's staying with us. I don't know for how long. I don't know how well this will work, but she has very few alternatives. 

 

So, it's been a painful and life changing weekend for both of us. 

 

 Part of my deleted post:

 

Sometimes, life is really hard. Not just the big events and big decisions. It's the everyday ones too. All the little pieces that make up a day, a week, a year - your whole life. 

And when one thing goes wrong, or not as expected - sometimes it's really easy for all the little things surrounding it to get unraveled too. I'm learning to knit. And sometimes, I'll notice a mistake I made in one stitch, and it's just one little stitch, but in a row of perfect stitches it's glaring. Now if I kept going, chances are when I get to the end, I wouldn't even notice that stitch anymore unless I was looking for it. And the only other people who would notice it are the people looking for it. But because it's right there, in front of me, I always feel like I have to fix it. Because if I don't, it's not perfect. But often when I'm working back and pulling stitches, I end up in an even bigger mess. I drop a stitch, or twist them or forget where I was when I made the mistake. And then I have to work back further and further until I can get it right again. All because of one little mistake. One little wayward stitch.

 . . .

I've stopped doing things just for me. And honestly, I don't even know how to anymore. Everything I am and everything I believe has been stitched into the fibers of my family. I don't know who I am without them.

 

. . .

I know that we'll keep moving forward and eventually this will just be one of those stitches that only the people who know about it notice. I mean, what else is there to do?

So there's sort of the reason I chose this weeks quote. I get stuck on the questions. I feel unsettled without the answers. Live the questions now. Perhaps someday the answers will come. 

Though my sister and I are hurting in different ways, I think the healing is the same. Keep moving, keep living. Don't wait for the answers. Maybe they'll come and maybe they won't. 

 

Maybe you'll find the answers have changed or perhaps you'll have forgotten the question.

quote for the week.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.  Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.  The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.  ~John Muir

quote for the week

 image source

"The season for enjoying the fullness of life -- partaking of the harvest,sharing the harvest with others, and reinvesting and saving portions of the harvest for yet another season of growth."
-   Denis Waitley

Happy October! I've continued on doing nothing much longer than I expected. It seems I needed that time so much more than I realized. I'll be back tomorrow to tell you all about the apples. 

quote for the week.

Finish each day and be done with it.  You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can.  Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

quote for the week.

 It's not only children who grow.  Parents do too.  As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours.  I can't tell my children to reach for the sun.  All I can do is reach for it, myself.  ~Joyce Maynard

Happy 12th birthday Evan. 

Quote for the week

Or month, or life.

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

 It was a scary, long, exhausting week.  Evan is home and well. They are also running tests for lyme disease and sending his spinal samples to the state lab, just to be sure but he has made what seems to be a full recovery.

 Tuesday, feeling well enough to play the PS3 that was in his room!

We were so, so blessed this past week and are so very grateful for everyone's love, support and well wishes. Really, our family and friends are beyond amazing.

 Tuesday night, I think. Excited to be well enough to leave the room for a bit

You know, I'm not strong enough (in many ways) to be a nurse, or a social worker though I've always felt that pull. And now, after our experiences I have that same sort of feeling again. This is the first one of my children has ever stayed overnight in the hospital. The first they've ever needed extensive testing and drugs and doctors like this. My children rarely even see the doctor aside from yearly physicals, in fact I don't think Evan has had a sick child visit in 5 years. 

But for some families, that's not the case. They have very sick children. They spend days and weeks and months in hospitals, without knowing for certain they'll be bringing home a healthy child. They might not have the support that we had. I was near cracking up after 4 nights sleeping in a hospital with a child in pain. Some parents do this for much, much longer. 

 I felt kind of creepy taking pictures in the hospital, but it was really an amazing place. This was the solarium on Evans floor.

 

I have many, many more thoughts on all of this but they're still sort of swirling around my head right now and I'm still adjusting to getting back to normal here. 

Right now I'm just feeling very loved and very, very grateful for everything and everyone in our lives. 

 

quote for the week (i turn 30)

Maybe in 10 years, or 20 years or more (or less!) I'll laugh over how seriously I took turning 30. It's not that I'm afraid of it (anymore). I'm a little sad about leaving my 20's behind. A little scared of what my 30's might bring. I always thought I'd be more, have more, by the time I turned 30. But 30 always seemed so far away. Now it's 4 days away.

It just seems so solid. Such a heavy, tangible number. In some ways I feel lost - like I should have 'found' myself by now or something. In other ways I feel like I'm moving towards a more 'real' me. Like everything that I do discover about myself now is the authentic version. I'm no longer just trying things on for size, playing dress up in someone elses life.

I think the above quote needs to be my theme for my 30th year. It's a little bit of everything I need.

quote for the week(s)

“Sometimes you need to step outside, get some air, and remind yourself of who you are and where you want to be.”

                                                                                             ~Unknown


I've been spending some time doing just that. Solitary hikes tucked into our busy days of work and lacrosse and everyday living.

My summer is winding down (well, getting busier, but coming to an end) these next few weeks my posts will most likely be peppered with more snapshots and fewer words as I spend some time working on the above quote and enjoying my last few weeks of summer.

See you soon.

quote for the week.

"Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday."

                                                                                                  Napoleon Hill

Happy Monday!