I [Heart] My Life

... this moment: Cousins & Steaming Mugs of Cocoa

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single  photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by SouleMama. You can play, too!

Mr. Toots, Capitola, CA

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... this moment: Our Chicken's First Egg

... this moment (aka pants-less hip hop dance in the woods!)

Family Traditions: Getting the Christmas Tree

A Sick Day for Bug: Little House Paper Dolls

If you have a small child, you know the middle-of-the-night drill: Loud snoring, lots of tossing and turning, mumbling in her sleep, clammy sheets, violently kicking those sheets off, migrating to your bed and then kicking you in the back all night... When she's finally awake, it turns out she's sick; so congested she is honking.

My little one has been sick before, of course. But the notion of a "sick day" -- a day home from school -- is a new one. 

What do you do? Luckily for us, Monday is the day when Joe doesn't have to report to work till 4p. So he and Nia hung out -- played some board games & indoor hopscotch, watched a movie, and dressed up some Laura Ingalls Wilder-inspired paper dolls.

A couple of months ago, we decided to embark on the the epic journey that is the Little House books. We actually started them a year ago or so, with the "My First Little House Books," which are picture book versions of the Laura Ingalls Wilder series. They are great; I'd recommend them to anyone.

The illustrations are gorgeous and the stories are sweet.

After reading many of these picture books, we decided to try some of the novels. We read Little House in the Big Woods, Farmer Boy, and On the Banks of Plum Creek. We even listened to a few of these as audio books.

So, yeah, we invested some real time in the Little House books.

I was excited to lose ourselves in some historical fiction, to give her a glimpse of how life was for little girls a hundred years plus years ago.

I wanted to like these books, I really did.

But, to be honest, I felt the novels had a little too much... well, detail.

There was more corporal punishment that I remembered from hearing them when I was a kid, there was the whole "kids should be seen and not heard" theme not to mention strict gender roles -- girls in the kitchen, guys outside (and Pa never includes Ma in decision-making), Pa's songs were more often then not racist (and inescapable on the audio version). And there was a lot of fear about Native Americans that was down right uncomfortable to read aloud. (Christine at The Aums blog wrote a great post about her misgivings about the Little House stories a few months back here.)

Nia enjoyed the books, for the most part. She asked a lot of questions and so we had some good discussions, but  one of the things that Nia seemed to like the most about the Little House books was any mention of clothing. She poured over the illustrations, analyzing what Laura, Mary & Ma were wearing and how they fixed their hair. It was nice to read about the girls selecting new cloth for party dresses on a special occasion & Ma sewing their clothes, or Ma twisting their hair in rags to create curls over night.

So one day I searched for a book about the fashions of the time. What I came up with were Little House Paper Dolls -- brilliant!

Yesterday, when Nia stayed home from school, these got a lot of play time. For us, this seems to be the perfect solution to the Little House books having some good ideas but being a little undesirable in the full novel format. This way she could make her own stories with the dolls -- some of it from bits she remembered from the books, and some of it just out of her own imagination. And of course, here were the wonderful clothes we'd read about!

These are our first paper dolls & I'm impressed with them. They are really very well done: Beautifully crafted, colorful, high-quality. The dolls themselves are on thick card stock and the clothes are on fairly heavy-weight paper, too. The only thing that takes some patience is cutting everything out: Each doll has a variety of clothing and there are also props for each of the scenes (one outdoor and one inside the cabin).

What's nice is that you don't have to cut everything out at once: You can cut out an outfit for each member of the family one day, and then cut some more another day to extend the life of the toy.

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Family Traditions: Getting the Christmas Tree

Some traditions begin organically.

After a few years, you suddenly realize, "Hey, we've been doing this thing every year just like this; this thing is a tradition!"

Others, well, they have to be made.

That's how it is with the donuts.

I am making donuts our family tradition. I am forcing them into tradition-ness.

I just really like the idea of it: We don't eat donuts the rest of the year, but on the morning that we get up early and go out into the wild and find ourselves a wild Christmas tree, we eat donuts. (Ok, it is, like, 11:30a. It isn't really the Wild. And the trees are pretty domesticated. But you know what I mean: We use our bare hands to saw down a tree; we wear boots. It's very Into the Wild minus the bears.)

But seriously, I like the idea of making a special day that much more fun and special by adding a totally out of the ordinary food, like donuts. So, last night I was on Yelp and researched the best donut place in the area (Donut Station in Capitola, it turns out) and then I was out the door at 6:30a into the 40-degree morning on my Donut Quest.

I don't know how to choose donuts. Maybe this is something that will develop as the tradition matures. But I know Joe likes cruelers and I know I like old-fashioneds, so I bought every single crueler they had, plus half a dozen assorted old-fasioneds, plus some donut holes for the kids.

And they were good. Really, really good.

More important than the sugar food, though, was sharing the whole afternoon with friends in this awesome place where I grew up. That's the stuff that really makes a tradition worth perpetuating.

(GHJ Tree Farm, Skyline Blvd, Los Gatos, CA)

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Thankful

Oh so thankful.

Friday Night: The Lengths I'm Willing to Go Tonight for a [Solo] Hot Bath

Me: Hot bath, lavendar bath "foam," green tea, Crazy Sexy Cancer.

Her: Elly the Elephant, headphones, "Pixar Shorts."

Collectively: 50+ minutes in our respective happy places.

... this moment: Our Chicken's First Egg

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single  photo -- PLUS A VIDEO - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by SouleMama. You can play, too!

Yesterday, our 25-week-old Americana, Sweet Cicely, layed her first-ever egg. She is the first of our 3-hen flock to start laying. I'll let Nia explain: 

We are ever-so-proud of this moment!

 

In case anyone is wondering, yes, getting chickens in the midst of my health crisis this summer was one of the best decisions we made to keep life moving forward, and to bring a little distraction to our home. Chickens, in turns out, make wonderful pets! If you had the pleasure of seeing Nia carrying a chicken around the backyard, then you know how this process has enhanced my girl's life!

This Body Belongs to Me... Doesn't It?

Do you remember the part in the Hunger Games when Katniss is in the arena for the second time and she finds the edge, where the arena ends? She shoots the arrow into thin air and makes a tear? 

I had a Hunger Games moment the other day.

(If I just lost you because you don't fancy yourself a reader of YA fiction, keep reading. You'll get it in  a sec.)

There I was, flat on my back, arms stretched back over my head, hands gripping plastic handle bars. Above me was a photo of a redwood forest fixed to the ceiling. Immediately beside me was a huge x-ray machine, which rotated around me, taking pictures of my bare chest.

I kept staring up at that picture. It was a huge picture -- maybe six feet by 3 feet, light from behind. You were meant to get lost in that picture.

But suddenly I noticed a small hole in the picture, and spanning out from the hole were green lines. Lines made from laser beams.

And while I never thought the forest was actually there, the laser beams were jarring. The hole was startling, too. I found myself thinking, This isn't real. This whole scene has been fabricated...

And suddenly, not only was the picture not real, but my whole situation became surreal.

My mind came suddenly back to the present. All around me, faceless technicians came and went, occasionally adding marks to a Sharpie-map only they could understand.

A map on my body. On my physical person.

Another little tattoo was added to the mix. Sometimes I was spoken to, usually not.

And it is moments like this -- and there have been a handful throughout this journey -- when I feel less like a person with cancer and more like a cancer with a person.

Or maybe just like a cancer, period.

Only the cancer is gone now. This body belongs to me... right?

I began radiation treatments yesterday. Down one, 27 sessions to go. Five days a week.

Turns out that while they are doing the treatments, they draw on me some more with a Sharpie. I'll stop trying so hard to scrub it off. (The initial map-making was in the "dress rehearsal" appointment.)

As I lay there, I focused on the music in my ear-buds & blinked back the tears in the corners of my eyes.

You need to lay perfectly still, came a voice from somewhere beyond my line of vision.

~~~

I feel so grouchy about all of this and this morning I suddenly put it together: I don't WANT to be a patient anymore. I'm tired of leaving my crying child to go to yet another cancer-related doctor appointment. (When will the cancer be gone? she asks, pleadingly.) I'm tired of hospital gowns (even my own).

I'm tired of being Cancer Girl.

This body belongs to me. This body, this medical body, I want it back.

Breathe in. 1 down.

Breathe out. 27 to go.

 

Weekending: Goat Milk Paint

This weekend we added a new headboard/bed shelf to our bedroom. Nia and I had fun painting it this squash blossom gold -- paint made from goat milk! We bought it at Harley Farms in Pescadero a couple months back and I love it! It doesn't smell fume-y like paint at all -- in fact, we ended up bringing it inside and doing the second coat inside. I'm loving the color so much. It is a lovely accent to the rust-orange, deep-red, avocado-green I already have going on in this room we all three spend so much time in. As the days get shorter, it is lovely to bring some golden-warmth indoors.

 

... this moment

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single  photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by SouleMama. You can play, too!

Coarsegold, CA

On Our Nightstands: Books, Books, Books

This is the post in which I cheat a little.

See, it's been awhile since I talked about what we are reading around here (Books for 4 Year Olds), and I'm not prepared to do it today either (sheesh, I know!).

BUT I wanted to quickly point you to a new feature I added to the blog that will let you know what we are all reading, even if I don't have time to do a book review at the moment. (See what I did there?)

Here is a nifty thing:

You can find the same graphic in the right-hand sidebar of the blog, but over there the book pictures are click-able. :)

(Now, in the interest of full-disclosure, I should tell you, that if you end up clicking on a title and buying it, say for a Christmas present, I get a few cents. Just so you know.)

Anyway. This one I'm especially excited about:

We've gotten VERY into audio books around here. In fact, that's pretty much all that is playing in the car when Nia is in the car. But that's ok, cuz it wasn't that long ago that we couldn't go anywhere without a crying baby (shudder! Remember this??).

So audio books are a-ok.

And this Dr. Seuss one is especially fun because of all the great readers on it. Our favorite story on here is Horton Hears a Who (which is actually a pretty good movie, too).

Joe and I listen to audio books, too -- he on his long commute, and me on my walks in the morning. (Our secret? We get 'em from the library!)