Goodbye February.

While the forts and playscapes get more and more awesome the older they get- once they are made- no one ever wants to take them down!  I wind up having billions of little pieces laying on the floor all day waiting for 1) the toddler to scatter them to the four winds throughout the day and 2) for me to step on the hardest, pointiest ones when I least expect it.  How many more months before the children can be sent OUTSIDE to make their messes?  

While I do the responsible thing, using up the older milk and making mozzerella...

THEY make homemade marshmallows.  

(Similar technique, very different outcome.)

Little girls in Mama's heels.  Enough said.

Papa works really hard during the week and then on the weekend has a million things he needs to get done too...most of which happen outside.  The children have discovered that if buried under children, he stays put for a while.

(Smart children.)

And there he is now... with his characteristic ear twiddling. 

Whenever he does it to me, I start to channel a dog getting itched in that particular spot where they can't stop jerking their one leg.   Matt's ear twiddling has that effect on me.  Ineke plays it off all cool though.

Ah, what a lovely moment of two brothers embracing.  What sweet and loving boys and what a wonderful bond brother have...

Oh wait.  

They are just trying to block the wind as they light up their homemade smoke bomb.

Ah, homeschooling bomb-making science projects... nothing better for forming brotherly bonds.

Cream puffs.  Do cream puffs ever need explanation?  

In which Ineke gets a new coat from Grandma:

I plunk her down to take a picture for a thank you note...

and then can't stop

taking pictures of her.

My little Jay Leno baby.

For Valentine's Day I made everyone homemade peanut butter treats in the wee small hours of the morning.

They also got my leg twitching.

And my Valentine turned another year older and I wondered, as I often do, how I managed to snag such a hard-working, kind, intelligent and handsome man.

And how these fifteen years of his being mine has felt like approximately 15 minutes.

And last but not least... 

The moment your two year old comes in the room looking like this and you wonder.... 

Is it poop or is it chocolate?

It can go either way.

Yes!  YES YES YES YES YES YES!!!!!!

Turns out it was chocolate ganache.  

An entire bowl of leftover cream puff ganache- but still... 

just ganache.

phew.

Jam in the Kitchen

Our dishwasher broke before Christmas and so we've been busy at the kitchen sink ever since.  

Dinner dish duty is way more fun when Corynn brings down her fancy schmancy speakers that glow lights and blow bubbles to jam some JJ Heller in the dark.  

Leave it to children to make chores a party.

Sunbathing in Winter

Doldrums of Winter

It's been a veritable puke fest (among other things) in this house for the past few weeks.... Ineke getting the worst of it.  While everyone elses' lasted only 24 hours or so, poor little Tiddle had serious vomiting/diarrhea for 8 days straight!  Just when she started to act better during the day and I would get my hopes up that she would have finally turned the corner...sure enough, I'd lay her down and then I'd hear Corynn running downstairs frantic.  Ineke's little arms turned to toothpicks and her Incredible Hulk thighs had turned downright spindly by day eight but I managed to keep her hydrated (the most important thing) and finally, she seems to have finally kicked it.  I cut dairy out of her diet altogether (which apparently was why her v/d continued so long- having developed *hopefully temporary* lactose intolerance.)  Now I have to figure out how to slowly reintroduce dairy and redisappear juice to her diet.  This should be fun.

Praise God I somehow escaped the bug so that I could be the laundry Miss, the chicken stock boiler, disinfecter and the nursemaid.  That was a great blessing because the Lord knows those jobs were much needed.

Snowstorms, too, have kept us housebound.  We've missed several weeks of church and I don't know about you- but when you miss church, things just ain't right. 

Wood supply burning up too quickly, southern winds that blow through walls and windows, Matt being gone from home more often due to work and that incident of Ineke catching her hair on fire and the fact that it is February and no sun and no woods' walks and no fresh air and still no signs of spring to seek for quite some time yet ...

All these, and more, has led to me feeling a mite like I had fallen through the ice and was scraping around looking for the hole to come back up through before I suffocated entirely.  That may be an overstatement... but not a terribly huge one.

I'm anxious for spring.  And green things.  And warm sunshine on my face.  And the feel of cool mud squishing through my toes.  And everybody well.  And boys wrestling outside instead of in.  And lots of other things.

Instead, I organize the spice cupboard or scrub clean the fridge and feel, for just a moment, that I have some sort of control over things.  I don't, of course, but I now have an organized spice cupboard.  Which counts for something, I suppose.

In January, I finished reading Popes and Feminists, The River of Doubt, Lila, and The Question of God.  I am now working on And Still She Laughs (in book form.  A gift.) and The Professor and The Madmad (in audiobook form) when working in the kitchen. 

I managed to properly procrastinate on Birthday and Valentine's Day yarn gifts until they could not possibly ever be finished in time to actually be given away for said gift.  And since I schizophrenically worked on all of them in desperation, I didn't get a single one of them done.  But hey, I can look at it as I was late for the birthdays or I can look at it as being REALLY ahead of the game for Christmas.

When I get in my little funk, it is so easy to just stay wallowing.   Why is this?  It takes no effort at all- maybe it is even a bit comforting- to think constantly about yourself and your woes.  But I think perhaps the best medicine to revive a sullen spirit is to put your mind onto something outside of yourself.  Look out at the thing right in front of your face and look at it with clear eyes, not cloudy ones.  Dilate.  Blink.  Focus.  Take note of what is surrounding you- anything to stop the constant thinking- and perhaps you will find that those glazed eyes might instead start to glimmer.

And by 'you', of course, I mean me. 


~~~
kcco
yarn along