Holiday #2, check

It’s funny how much easier it is to cook Thanksgiving dinner for nine people when you have a kitchen.

Over two days I made:

Apple pie

Pumpkin pie

Mashed potatoes

Stuffing

Gravy

Cranberry sauce

Rolls (yeasted - from scratch!)

Thyme butter carrots

Mushrooms in cream

Brussels sprouts with butternut squash and walnuts

Real whipped cream

The BF bought a bbq’d turkey that he heated up out in the rain at the bbq. Glad I didn’t have to share my small oven, which ran almost continually for two days.

My sister and brother in law came, as well as his nephew, the nephew’s wife and three-year-old son. Absent was the BF’s sister, around which there was some drama. Most of the drama was in my head, but still, yeah. Let’s just say it was a very pleasant evening and visit until I had to cut it short by leaving for DC to sing at an event on Saturday until I got home late Tuesday night. 

This is an event we’ve had for years, but since they moved to Thanksgiving weekend, it will probably be our last. Most of our musicians just aren’t willing to sacrifice family time. The event for me was extremely stressful - I spent most of it when I wasn’t working in my hotel room with social anxiety, and the rest of the time trying to frantically memorize song lyrics as it’s become plain to me that bringing ragged pieces of paper with lyrics to read while singing is no longer acceptable. It was a habit I got into when I had babies and was so horribly sleep deprived that I couldn’t remember anything...and it became kind of a crutch. There are songs I’ve been singing for five years that I still can’t remember. But I’ve been forcing myself to remember now, which is hard, because I always have that panic on stage that I’m going to blank out (sometimes I do). However, I feel like I have the mental bandwidth these days to take on these formerly low-priority tasks.

The long Thanksgiving week with kids off school went just fine, and gave me confidence that I can handle kids all winter break with no camp. It’s only the week of Christmas - which will be easy because there’ll be lots to do, and for part of it the boys will have new toys to play with; then a few days the following week before we go visit my sister in Florida until the end of the break. Bam. 

With the changing of the weather (LA goes from 80s and sunny to 50s and rainy pretty much overnight, and always right around now) I’m keen to throw myself back into my knitting projects. I’ve been using this tool called a lucet - a medieval braiding tool - to make a tree garland; next I need to get off my duff and try knitting the boys hats, which is scary because it’s a whole new skill set I don’t have yet (so far I’ve only made scarves and wash cloths). 

The boys are now dry about 90% of the time. It’s funny to think after all that agide about getting them out of pull-ups, the solution was simply doing it and putting up with wet beds for a few weeks. I gave away the diaper pail to a pregnant friend last week, along with my old ergo and mei tei carriers and baby monitor. I kept the tiny newborn carrier. Soon the boys will outgrow their baby onesie blankets my sister made; Bobby’s is literally falling apart. I have plans to get them duvets and new sheets now that it’s less likely they’ll pee on them. 

This weekend we finally put up our lights and get a tree, and I need to get to work buying presents and making candy for various events. Holiday #3, let’s do this!

Thanksgiving week

I’m still malingering in bed and it’s nearly 10 AM. This, my friends, is the luxury of children who can dress themselves and entertain themselves in the morning when there’s no school. This is not a luxury I take for granted, not one bit.

We had both kids’ parent teacher conferences last week. Much to my delight, both kids got stellar reports. I wasn’t sure about Theo since he’s new at school and had gotten in trouble for punching a kid in the back a few days before - an incident his teacher didn’t even remember, thankfully - but his teacher said he was doing well but just needed to settle down and not socialize so much when they were doing mat time (she said the same thing about Bobby two years ago). Bobby’s teacher said he was a joy to have in the classroom. It’s funny; when you’re with your kids all the time, sometimes you only see their faults (the whining, the fighting, how hard it is to get them to do anything), but then given the perspective of one who works with large groups of kids all the time, you see how well-behaved your kids really are. In this moment, I’d like to express gratitude for kids who are healthy and doing well. Another thing I do not take for granted.

I just got back from a weekend in Austin singing; next weekend I go to DC. Then short of a quick stint to Nor Cal in January, I have no trips until end of April. I’m hoping to take that time to try to diet and work on the garden. I feel like every conversation I have with every woman my age is about how we all don’t like the weight we’re at but can’t seem to lose any and how frustrating it is. For now I’ve downgraded my expectations to trying not to gain any more before the end of the year...which is tough considering there’s Thanksgiving and Christmas in the way. But I am at my highest weight right now - and have been for most of this year. I’m torn between wanting to just settle at this weight and be ok with it, or really make an effort to lop off ten pounds and stay there (that’s the hard part). Either way I managed to look probably the best I’ve ever looked this weekend, which was a great ego boost. I may be middle aged and flabby and aging disgracefully, but at least I can still clean up pretty good!

I am a domestic goddess

So often these days I think about what life was like last year - no kitchen, cooking on a hot plate in my spidery laundry room, everything from the kitchen cabinets stacked all over every other room in the house. I had a four year old and a six year old, both going to different schools. It was stressful. And the only thing that kept me going was imagining now - a year later, with a completed and paid for kitchen, kids at the same school and a year older.

And here we are. And I am leaning in and enjoying every minute of it. I’ve been on quite a baking spree lately, making apple crisp, a Dutch apple cake, and persimmon cookies; next up I want to make persimmon freezer jam and start making bread. 

The boys have been extra energetic lately and the only thing I can attribute it to is the nightly Halloween candy. I only let them have a couple of pieces a day after dinner, but...I’m starting to wonder if this is why they’ve been so loud and boisterous (one night last week I just had them go in their room to play after dinner; I couldn’t handle the yelling and thrashing around one more second). I’m considering throwing the rest of it out. 

In better news, both of them are having more instances of being dry at night than not. Theo is down to maybe one wet night every 7-10 days; Bobby’s at maybe two nights a week (where Theo was a month ago). Is this all it takes to get kids to stay dry at night - just tolerating a few months of constant bed wetting until they stop...? At any rate, I’m pretty delighted. It was definitely one of the things I felt a lot of shame and failure about (and perhaps they did, too) - now there isn’t anything about them that I feel is behind their peers. Is sleep away camp in our future...?

This week I’m having the two house projects I can *kind of* afford done - removal of my long-peeling bathroom wallpaper and application of new (old) wallpaper, see below, and painting my bedroom so I can finally hang some pictures and finish that room, three years later. I found a kick-ass female handy woman to do these things for me. Very excited about that. 

Budapest

Returned from my second and possibly last trip to Budapest. For the next three years the event will fall on Halloween; I had spent countless hours of mental energy trying to figure out how to make this work - maybe miss one Halloween but then have the band use another singer for the other two, try to shift the nights we play off the weekend, try to at least be home for the kids’ school parade if not actual trick or treating, etc - but then our drummer bailed me out by emailing that he’d have to give next year a pass to stay home for his kid. Thank you, loyal family guy. 

I had (and still have) a horrific guttural cough the whole trip, which made singing three nights in a row pure torture. Lots of water, tea and cough drops helped somewhat, but I mostly survived by convincing myself not to cough while singing, which was very difficult and mentally draining. Still, the trip was enjoyable. I love the city, and enjoyed a good parboil at one of the local thermal baths. I’m sad we’ll miss it for several years (possibly forever, if they forget about us), but hey - we got a good offer for Spain the weekend after for next year, so there’s that.

Miracle of miracles, both boys have been dry the last three nights. Somehow Bobby just stopped peeing after weeks of wet pjs. I don’t trust it - Theo’s been out of pull-ups since the summer but still seems to wet the bed once or twice a week, but we’re clearly making progress. I’ve been all over the map with this night training stuff - having been told it’s a mind-body connection and they’ll do it when they’re ready, but then coming to realize they’ll never do it as long as they have the convenience of a pull up to pee in and finally just having to force the issue at 7 1/2 and 5 1/2, I can honestly say I wish we’d done this way sooner. Of course the reason I didn’t was because of B’s horrendous encopresis, which, by the way, has not been an issue since he learned to squat on the toilet seat back in July. So, hallelujah there. 

I’ve been interested in this theory called the four tendencies about personality types. While I take all of these things with a huge grain of salt, I have to admit I’ve always known I’m a rebel type - I have to do things my own way and on my own, I’ll reject things others like or want me to like just because, I enjoy being a contrarian just to shock or annoy people. I’m not saying any of this is something to be proud of; I’m just saying it is. And I definitely see these qualities in Bobby, which makes me equal parts smugly proud and scared. I’m convinced his issues with toilet stuff - the encopresis and delayed night training - are a big part of this. He wants control over his body and he’ll do things on his own time no matter what you want. It’s frustrating as a parent, but I get it, as it is me. Why he’s decided now that it’s time to be dry at night, I don’t know. But I’m not going to look that gift horse in the mouth. If it’s finally time to stop buying expensive pull-ups at the grocery store and wipes and keeping the diaper genie, I’m utterly delighted. 

Hallowe’en

A brief post while I sit in the airport waiting for my flight to Budapest. We had a swell Halloween with the kids dressed as Batman villains. I was surprised by how few jokers there were. Kids’ Halloween parade at school was held inside due to terrible breathing conditions from our entire state being on fire (nothing threatening us, thankfully); I helped out at a pot luck for Bobby’s class, and then we trick or treated at our favorite spot in Eagle Rock. Then up at 4 AM for my flight. Phew!

Bordeaux

I’m currently in between European trips and have over-volunteered myself for Halloween-related activities because apparently I’m a masochist. I’m determined to be more active in the boys’ school - I’m going to help set up a booth at the Halloween carnival tomorrow, and am bringing a big bag of supplies.

I got back from Bordeaux Monday - it was a real nail biter; I returned Monday afternoon but the BF left for a business trip (first time ever) Sunday morning. Thankfully our intrepid babysitter just happened to be available to fill in the gap; but I had to be on time to pick them up from school Monday. Had there been any delays we would have been screwed. But I got home, lay down for an hour and then went to get them. It all worked out.

Bordeaux was great - I haven’t been to France since I went to Paris in 2005 to chase a Craig’s List relationship. I really, really like it there. It’s so damned civilized. I love how everyone greets each other (“bonjour madame!”), I love how you’re allowed to linger in restaurants, I love how old and pretty everything is. The best thing, though, was as the sole French speaker in our band of seven, I was made the group interpreter, and it was very empowering. At one point I managed to hold a conversation with the organizer’s stepdad who didn’t speak a word of English; I love languages! 

I won’t be so lucky next week in Budapest! Thankfully our American pianist has deep roots in Hungary and speaks the language. Not that everyone didn’t speak English last time we were there, anyway. 

Here are some France highlights:

Pumpkin patch!

Had a fun day with the donor sibs at the pumpkin patch today - came home and made jack o’lanterns and roasted pumpkin seeds. I’m going to try not to eat them all tonight!