Nobler Modes of Life

It's not exactly what Tennyson had in mind, but once again I am using this time of year to set some goals for myself. I suspect some of my former Resolutions smacked of too generic to be useful. Be Healthy is less  helpful to me when I'm deciding between doughnuts or hopping on the elliptical than if I'd promised to eat only homemade snacks for next twelve weeks.

So here, rather than more generic resolutions, is my obscenely long and likely not-totally-doable list of Goals for 2012. (I'm hoping that by hitting the "Publish" button on these I'll be more likely to fulfill some of them than if I'd kept them to myself.)

Create/Media/the Arts

• finish knitting Ilse's baby pants by end of January
• blog 102 posts (2x week) on Palingenesis
• blog 24 posts (2x month) on Wellcookbooked 
• get a spiral planner to plan blog posts  done!
• read more poetry---at least a few poems a week
• write a poem a week (used to write one a day. I can do this!)
• see a play at a local playhouse
• join Twitter and figure out what it's all about
• use Pintrest at least 1x week
• revamp the Palingenesis blog's design
• schedule evenings for TV and other nights for projects/writing/reading (default in 2011 was TV). Discuss with Justin and figure out by January 15th.
• frog the sweaters by my bed
• knit socks (one pair for me, one for Justin)
• knit handwarmers (one set for me, one for Justin)
• set-up sewing machine in place it can be kept out and used 
• make Advent calendar (by July)
• use my lunch break for creating or reading novels vs. net surfing
• make flannel mennorah for Hanukkah (by October)
• participate in 2012 NaNoWriMo
• at least one carnival post a quarter
• try at least 24 new sauces or salad dressings in 2012
• re-read Arthurian legends/novels
• knit wool diaper cover for Ilse
• read a classic a quarter
• make the girls a puppet theatre

Household

• Ilse and I move into Uli's room/futon  (3/12)
• go through my clothes boxes in Uli's closet and donate unused
• go through downstairs bookshelves and pull books/magazines to donate; rearrange the rest (3/12)
• follow Martha Stewart's housekeeping schedule for a month and see how it goes
• plant the garden with herbs/veggies, keeping in mind savings/usefulness
• pack decorations (spring/autumn/winter holidays) into easily-findable containers in basement
• brush dogs at least 2x month
• brush Lucy at least 2x month
• decide what to do about Lucy (find new home?)
• take dogs for runs in the AM when weather permits (2x week)
• make another batch of deodorant using arrowroot
• weed through our children's books, pulling the non-literary type (3/12)
• switch to cloth dinner napkins (1/12)
• lay out clothes the night before
• keep birdfeeders filled
• create chore charts for Uli (bedtime and downstairs)
• organize linen closet (make sure everything smells good!)
• pick paint color for hallway
• hang pictures in Uli's/Ilse's room
• find way to keep top of microwave clutter free
• keep top of fridge clutter free

Traditions/Memories

• celebrate vernal & autumnal equinoxes/equiluxes--look up traditional celebrations
• get snapshot/photo of entire family
• start eating breakfast with Uli/Ilse at table
• Passover at my house this year
• celebrate solstices--look up traditional celebrations (winter = the burning/releasing old with pouches of tobacco)
• one night (first? eighth?) of Hanukkah at my house this year
• light a candle during meals at home
• print out some photos in "hardcopy" vs. keeping all on computer

Nutrition/Foods & Health/Fitness

• jazz up lunch (at least two delicious and nutritious lunches a week)
• snacks are limited to the homemade (if I want fries or cookies I'm welcome to them, so long as I [or my husband] has made them at home)
• kick the coffee habit! Reduce to one cup a day. Switch to black tea for less caffeine.
• exercise DVDS 2x/week (mornings)
• sit/squat for one meal a week (coffeetable)
• find a healthy whole grain bread both Justin and I can agree on (2/12)
• bake a loaf of whole wheat bread at home (Laurel's Kitchen)
• grow and glean items for homemade teas
• elliptical 40 mins week (whether 10 mins at time or all in one day)
• in good weather:  back to walking in the evenings with the girls
• find good peanut-free Pad Thai recipe
• find raw milk supplier
• eat only organic for one month
• sign-up for CSA! (use PPlus reimbursement)
• work up to sitting on heels comfortably
• try meditation (spring?)

Misc.

• start a Montessori school fund for the girls
• bike to work at least one time in 2012!

OK. That seems like kind of a lot. But I have a whole 365 days. Surely some of the above can be accomplished. And more. I just need to get  to it. 

How about you? Have you made resolutions/goals for 2012? I'd love to hear them!

I love my sweet girls

Ilse was making new sounds this morning. Not talking, obviously, but new-to-her noises. It's amazing, watching her grow. And it's fun, watching her watch Uli, who is also changing daily.

What amazing children I have. Their relationship is evolving. I no longer see the only-child whose territory was invaded. Instead, I have two girls. Sisters. Uli talks about loving and protecting and teaching things to Ilse. Ilse smiles the biggest, most amazing smiles for Uli (not even momma gets these smiles. They're a mile wide and accompanied with lots of eye twinkles and arm waiving and occasional wild cooing).

Ilse loves to hold your fingers and push up with straightened legs until she's standing. I don't remember Uli doing that (at least, not so often. At four months). She also loves to hold and turn the pages of That's Not My Reindeer, drooling over the shiny foil illustrations.

She thinks we're documenting her candy score,
but I really just wanted a picture of her with her hair brushed! ;-)

Uli now gets her crayons out of their box by herself, and she's been on a coloring spree. If you leave paper within her reach (which is extensive) you are going to come back to it and find embellishments of red, yellow, blue, and green. Guaranteed. She also calls her father and me by endearments we use with each other and with her. It's not unusually for her to say, "Hi Sweetheart" to me or "Okay, Honey" to her daddy. I love that and I'm soaking it up, for I suspect she won't keep it up for long.

Every day is a a day I'm thankful to be with my family. Love these little ones so so so much.

Lunchtime Purge

Mental purging, people, mental.

I've been thinking. I eat like crap. Seriously. I make some good homemade meals, and my husband does his best to cook interesting meals day in and day out (whilst also managing our household and caring very sweetly for our two girls), but overall what I bring to work for lunches is too often too much of the bad stuff and too little of the good. I came to this conclusion after looking at today's lunch and realizing it was awesome and how usually I don't eat as well.

Today's food so far:

Breakfast (no awards here)

• Coffee with del-ISH creamer someone shared with me (ok, so this one is kinda bad)
• Small piece of almond kringle someone set-out in the breakroom (props for the "small"?)

Lunch

• Coffee with milk (hurray! No sugar or weird transfats! but... two cups of coffee isn't my finest hour)
• Hard-boiled egg
• Borscht
• Steamed broccoli
• Two clementines (though, technically they aren't part of lunch. I'm saving them for a snack)

Good lunch, no? I wish it were like this every day. But it's not. Even when my husband sends me to work with healthy items in my lunchbag I am often tempted by the dark side and scarf down on the amazing amount of fatty, nutritionly void, really tasty, crunchy and/or sweet treats I can buy at work (even worse: each costs a dollar. Bills fly from my finger tips. Just. Like. That. And suddenly the food is in my mouth. And then, worse, gone. And I'm still hungry. And poorer. Horrible.)

So this all leads me to think I should start talking/writing more about what I eat. Because public shame is a motivator for me. If I know I "have" to share what I'm eating I'm more likely to stick to a healthier diet. It's just a thought, but I think it'd be good for me.

Other thoughts: 

• I cannot believe Christmas is THIS WEEKEND. I need to get my Christmas Eve Eve menu finalized and get to the grocery store!!
• I hurt my back this weekend. I reached for and lifted a kitchen sponge off the back of the sink  and nearly passed out from the spasm of pain (didn't lift with my knees?). Justin says it's because my core is weak. But apparently, to strengthen my core, I need to, like, exercise. And, get this, all the work I've put in moving my fork to my mouth doesn't even count. Bummer, man.
• I wish lunch breaks were longer. And took place on the beach. In Mexico.

Letters to Santa, 2011

Dear Santa,

Uli has made her first Christmas list! She would like:

1. a drum
2. a flute
3. a baby kitty

That would be a real baby kitty, in case you're wondering. Apparently the five cats we already have are too old and don't climb up our legs often enough.

Ilse, while not yet able to compose an official list, nevertheless appears to enjoy dog toys, which reminds me of her older sister, who also favored our pups' things.

It's your call, Santa. Kittens. Dog toys. Whatever. We're ready!

(But no kittens. In all seriousness. No.)

Recycled Holiday Postcards

Do you save the Christmas cards people send you? I do. They're usually so pretty, I never feel right throwing them out, not even into the recycling bin. So I've been hoarding saving-up cards these past few years. I just tuck them into the boxes of decorations and down into the basement storage they go. But then each year as we set-up the tree my husband asks me, What are we doing with all these old cards? I've always told him I'm working on a project; he's humored me so far, even though he knows my "projects" might take a year or two (or four) to percolate. But I've always been certain  I'd figure out some way of reusing those cards someday. And this year, I did!

My family is cutting back on household expenses, and holiday cards, especially the ones I like to buy on recycled paper (have you noticed the stores seem to charge a dollar or so extra for them? Opportunists), seemed a natural item to trim from the budget. (Nice to send and awesome to recieve, but necessary on a tight budget? Not exactly, what with e-mails and FaceBook.)

But I was sad, thinking about not sending any cards to my friends and family. I love receiving them and figure my loved-ones do too. But how to make it happen this year...  I had some cards left over from previous years' mailings that I decided to send to new friends not on our previous mailing lists, but how to share holiday wishes with the rest of my family and friends?

Enter:  stroke of brilliance!

You take the lovely cards people mailed to you in years past.

Cut them in half, seperating the pretty card front from the well-wishing and family/friend signatures inside.

Write your own well-wishing and holiday greetings on the back of the cards' fronts, just like you would on a postcard. Address as you would a postcard.

Voila! Holiday postcards for those you love, upcycled by you from past years' cherished cards.

Is there a risk you'll send the card Aunt Kathy sent to you last year back to Aunt Kathy this year as a postcard? Possibly. I recommend checking the signatures before cutting off the cards' backs and addressing them. I had a few cards that I'd already cut-up, so it's a possibilty I'll be mailing back someones card to them. But would that really be a tragedy? They chose to send them in a past year because they liked them, right? However, for those cards I had saved intact, I did take steps to ensure I wasn't re-mailing them back to their original sender. I even went so far as to seperate the cards we'd received from my husband's family from those from my own family, and then also from my friends, and then attempted to mix-up the postcards enough so that my family's former cards were sent to my husband's family and vice versa, so no one would notice repeats from last year. But if I messed some up? I'm not worried. I think everyone who knows us will be okay with my thrifiness and will--it is my sincere hope--understand that it isn't because we don't love them that we didn't buy new cardstock this year.

How about you? Have any cards saved from years past and wondering what to do with them? I wholeheartedly recommend the postcard recycling method. It not only saved us money, but it was fun to go back through all the cards and try to pick out the best card for each recipient on our list. It helped me get into the holiday spirit for sure!

Wordless Wednesday: Napping

My sweet Ilse

Baby dreams 

Baby cheeks

The baby I love

Thanksgiving

Recap:

Awoke at 2am to an aroma of roast turkey (Justin put it in last night at 10:30pm for slow roasting).

Watched Poky Little Puppy's First Christmas for the third (forth?) time with Uli.

Ilse rolled-over for the first time!

Icing on the Cake coffee. Mmmmm.

Cooked. Ate. Cleaned. Ate some more.

No naps.

Pizza for dinner.

Bedtime at 6pm (thank you, no naps!).

Disagreement over which Star Wars is movie "number one" (I say A New Hope from 1977, Justin insists its Phantom Menace, '99). Consensus not reached.

Hope your Thanksgiving was as good! Happy Holiday!

Three

My first baby is three. Wow.

And she's a lovely three. Smart. Funny. Beautiful.

But very, very three, if you know what I mean.

She's inquisitive, playful, and continually testing boundaries.

She has a growing vocabulary that includes phrases such as "You're being ridiculous, Mama!" (which she uses when I am insane enough to ask her to stop jumping on/off the furniture or to change out of her pjs) and "I just don't like to think about it" (which is usually preceded by my question, "Do you know you're being very rude?").

She loves her little sister and when we play house Ilse Louise (or "Ilse-Sueeze" per Uli's pronounciation) is her baby. However, Uli doesn't like it when Ilse looks at her toys and moves them out of her line of sight if she feels Ilse is paying too much attention to any one baby/fluffy animal/set of blocks (I try reminding her that rather soon Ilse will be mobile and able to do a bit more than just look...).

Sharing continues to be a difficult concept for her (I now completely understand why parents would have a big, fancy away-from-home birthday party for their three year old---neutral toys. I would do anything to avoid a repeat birthday tantrum with screams of "Those kids are playing with my toys! No, no no! I want them to go home!" Soooo embarrassing...)

I'm still not certain about television for a child her age, but she watches a PBS show here or there when a day is going well. Curious George, Super Why!, Sid the Science Kid, and library videos of Ni Hao Kai-Lan. And she's been introduced to the spooky world of Scooby Doo (the age-appropriateness of which may or may not be hotly contested in our home, but a show which I admit she does seem to enjoy). She also loves "the zoo show," especially on nights when we all pile into mommy and daddy's bed and enjoy a movie and popcorn before it's time to sleep.

She's beautiful, my girl. And is definitely now a young child rather than a toddler.

Happy three, Uli! We love you!