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2014: Bookish Year in Review, Part II

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If you missed Part I of my bookish 2014 wrap-up, check it out here.  Otherwise, onward to Part II – my top ten books of the year!  Even though I hit a major reading slump this year – a slump that’s still going, much as I try to claw my way out of the hole – I did read some really fantastic books.  Back in July, I shared the ten best books I’d read in the first half of the year, and some of those will be making their appearance on this list too, along with some from the second half of the year.  Read on to see my favorites from 2014, in no particular order:

the dead in their vaulted arches The Dead in their Vaulted Arches (Flavia de Luce #6), by Alan Bradley – In the sixth installment of Flavia’s adventures, sleuthing takes a bit of a backseat as Flavia’s lost mother returns home.  Flavia spends a lot of the book learning many, many things she didn’t know about Harriet, and the book ended with the series poised to go in an entirely new direction.  I can’t wait to see what Flavia gets up to next, and I won’t have to wait long – the seventh volume is out this month and I’m already on the wait list for it at the library.

The Writing Class The Writing Class, by Jincy Willet – Another from the first half of the year, The Writing Class is Jincy Willet’s introduction to reclusive writing teacher Amy Gallup.  Amy is a washed-up curmudgeon (once a critically praised writer, her books are now all out of print) who makes a little cash by teaching at the local university extension.  Amy’s classes are unremarkable until one fateful semester, when the group is terrorized by a “writing class sniper,” a class member with a cruel pen, a razor-sharp wit, and a complete disregard for human life.

amy falls down Amy Falls Down, by Jincy Willet – This fall, I read Willet’s second novel featuring Amy Gallup.  Amy Falls Down is a completely different book from The Writing Class, and I loved it, maybe, even more.  In this volume, Amy trips in her backyard and hits her head on a birdbath shortly before she is scheduled to give an interview to a local reporter.  In her concussed state, Amy presents as a complete eccentric, and her bizarre interview launches her career in ways she couldn’t possibly have foreseen.  You don’t have to have read The Writing Class to enjoy Amy Falls Down, although there are occasional references to the earlier book.

henrietta's war Henrietta’s War, by Joyce Dennys – I have a thing for English fiction set between the wars, during, and immediately after World War II, and Henrietta’s War is a perfect example.  Henrietta is the wife of a hardworking Devonshire doctor, mother of two grown children, and penpal to her “dear childhood’s friend” Robert, who is off fighting for King and Country.  In this epistolary novel, Henrietta keeps Robert updated on all the goings-on in their sleepy town.  I fell in love with the characters – some eccentric, all loveable and staunch – and with Henrietta’s breezy, chatty, but sometimes bittersweet letters.

the golem and the jinni The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker – In 1890s New York City, a golem (a creature made of clay) and jinni (a creature made of fire) meet and become the unlikeliest of friends.  Although they are temporarily torn apart by a violent incident, ultimately, it is only their friendship that can save them from certain destruction.  I have grown to really enjoy the gaslamp fantasy genre, and this was a perfect addition to my reading list.  Wecker’s writing is rich and atmospheric, and the relationship between the golem and the jinni is complex and sweet.

the magician's land The Magician’s Land, by Lev Grossman – This final installment in Grossman’s Magicians trilogy was the best yet.  I liked The Magicians, really liked The Magician King, and LOVED The Magician’s Land.  Quentin Coldwater has been kicked out of Fillory – unfairly, but there it is – and is now trying to live his life on Earth again.  He’s got a new sidekick and a complicated spell to try, but Quentin can’t focus on any of that stuff.  He can only think of the dangerous mission he’s undertaken: to return his lost love, Alice, to life again.  (I’m not going to tell you if it works, because reading about Quentin’s efforts to bring back Alice, and the emotions that went along with that. were the best part of the book.)  Meanwhile, Janet and Eliot are ruling over Fillory, which is facing a crisis of its own.  The characters have all done a lot of growing up over the course of the series – I even liked Janet, which is saying a lot, and for the first time, I adored Quentin.  This conclusion to the trilogy was everything I could have hoped for: rich, satisfying, and perfect.

crocodile on the sandbank Crocodile on the Sandbank (Amelia Peabody #1), by Elizabeth Peters – Miss Marple meets Indiana Jones, is how I can best describe Amelia.  The indomitable Victorian Egyptologist’s first adventure – in which she travels to Egypt for the first time, makes friends, and confronts a mummy – is a fun, spirited romp.  I’ve still only read the first three in this series (of more than twenty!) but I’ll be following Amelia’s adventures for a long time.

the four graces The Four Graces, by D.E. Stevenson – The British-between-the-wars-gentle-fiction genre is one of my particular reading vices, I’ll admit.  (Well, is it a vice?  Can something so entirely wholesome be a vice?)  So it’s kind of amazing that I’d never heard of D.E. Stevenson until recently.  I loved The Four Graces, the story of one eventful summer in the lives of the Grace sisters – bright Liz, quiet Sal, shy Tilly, and sociable Addie.  There’s romance, overbearing relatives, and a “best ankles” contest – what’s not to love?  There was nothing particularly earth-shattering about the book, but I loved every page.

my life in middlemarch My Life in Middlemarch, by Rebecca Mead – Another genre vice: books about books.  I read a few this year, and My Life in Middlemarch was the best.  It’s part history, part memoir, part lit-crit, all delightful.  I loved reading about Mead’s journey through life, viewed through the lens of her favorite book.  And it made me want to re-read Middlemarch, which I last read in 2013 (and also loved, although Jane Eyre still holds the top spot in my particular reader’s heart).

ten years in the tub Ten Years in the Tub: A Decade Soaking in Great Books, by Nick Hornby – One more from the books-about-books genre to close out the year.  I read Hornby’s collection of all of his columns for The Believer over the course of about two months, little by little.  (Fortunately, I was able to knock it out juuuuuuust when I ran out of library renewals.)  Hornby made me cry on just about every page – mostly from laughter, but his writing about his autistic son?  All.The.Feels.  (And sometimes cry-laughs, too, like when he says that his son doesn’t have any spectacular talents unless you count being able to hear a crisps packet being opened from several streets away – snort.  Hornby might be the only writer out there who can poke fun at his autistic kid, but do it so obviously lovingly that you just laugh along with him and wish you could hang out with them both every day.)

There you have it – my top ten!  Although I didn’t have quite the volume of books I’m used to this year, I did read some really wonderful things.  How was your reading year, and what were your favorite books read this year?  I’m working on a TBR for 2015, so please, do share.

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2014: Bookish Year In Review, Part I

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Well, friends, do I have a bookish week ahead for you.  Today, Part I of my traditional look back at last year’s reading, with Part II to follow on Wednesday, and one of my favorite posts of the year – Book Superlatives – on Friday!  I know what you’re thinking: FINALLY, a bookish week!  We were getting so tired of reading about her hikes and holiday recaps and New Year’s resolutions!  Well, I do promise that I am trying my best to kick this reading slump I’ve been in and keep the literary content up around here, but you can expect to see more hiking and family activity posts over the course of the year, too.  I’m hoping for some balanced posting this year, and I swear I’m trying!

As a reading year goes, 2014 was a bit of a mixed bag for me.  I read some really fantastic books last year and had a few months where I just whipped through page after page of excellent writing… but in the second half of the year I hit a major reading slump that’s still going on.  With a rough fall, a few extremely busy times at work, a toddler, and a difficult move to a new house in which it seemed that everything broke all at once, I found that even when I had the time to sit down, I didn’t always have the attention for a big (or even a short) book.  And much as I don’t want to start blaming the baby for stuff before he’s even born, pregnancy didn’t help matters (falling asleep in Peanut’s rocking chair at 8:00 doesn’t make for great evening reading time.)  As a result, my 2014 bookish stats are looking pretty weak.  Still, I managed to read a few books each month and I also learned to go easy on myself, focusing less on numbers and page totals and more on what makes me happy – because life’s too short, right?  So with that, my bookish 2014, by the numbers:

Total books read: 71
Fiction: 54, or 76 %
Nonfiction: 17, or 24 %

My Goodreads stats show 65 books read, but I don’t record re-reads over there, so my actual total is a bit higher.  I’m pretty happy with 71.  It’s not the three digits I’ve come to expect from myself over the past few years, but that just might be the way things are going these days.  Most weekdays see me rushing out the door to work, putting in a full day (no lunchtime reading) at the office, picking Peanut up, rushing home to get dinner on the table, do bath and bedtime routine, and then sit with Peanut until she falls asleep (she’s going through a clingy phase and if I don’t sit there it’s a bad scene) – and I often don’t get a second to unwind until 9:00 or later, at which point I’m pretty much spent and ready to go to sleep myself.  Weekends are a bit looser, but still packed full of caring for Peanut, errands, grocery runs, cleaning the house, meal prep for the week, and trying to squeeze a little family time (and exercise if I’m really lucky) in there; there’s not much time for reading even on days off work.  I’m not trying to “mommy martyr” – I’m just telling it like it is.  I’d love to get a bit more free time to read, but I’m snatching it in periods of a few minutes here and a few minutes there, most of which I’m too tired to open a book anyway.  Until the kids are older and I have more free time, the book totals might be lower, and I’ve got to be okay with that.  And you know what?  I am.

Anyway, the whining being over, let’s get to the detailed breakdown, because who doesn’t love a good pie… errrr, chart?

2014 Fiction Genres

2014 Fiction Genres

Fiction genres requires something of a judgment call on certain books.  For instance, the Little House books – are they classics or young adult?  As you can probably guess by the fact that I read nineteen classics and only one YA book this year, I considered the Little House series (which I re-read in January) classics.  There’s definitely room for interpretation on genre (I’ve written about this issue before) so please keep in mind that the genres reflected above do include somewhat subjective judgments on my part.

That said, I was pretty pleased with my classics total for the year, but wish I’d read more than six literary fiction titles – something to work on for next year, perhaps?

2014 Settings

2014 Settings

The biggest surprise for me here was that, for possibly the first time ever, the USA edged out Great Britain in terms of book settings!  Usually the UK, and England in particular, account for the greatest number of books set in those areas.  Last year the USA was a close second, and this year it was the winner by five books – which is a lot, considering I read about thirty fewer books this year than I usually do.  The other takeaway is that I really need to read more books set in other areas of the world.  I had nothing in Asia or the Pacific region, and only three books set in Africa – all three of which, I have to confess, were Amelia Peabody mysteries.  So I really do need to do better on that front.

2014 Authors’ Sex

2014 Authors' Sex

Hmmmmm, do you think I have a bit of a bias here?  More than three quarters of the books I read this year (and this chart accounts for both fiction and non-fiction) were written by women – wow.  I guess I need to focus on giving the guys a bit more attention next year, huh?

2014 Book Source

2014 Book Sources

Unsurprisingly, the majority of the books I read this year (34 out of 71) came from the library.  What is surprising, is that my library totals were so few!  A full 29 books from my own shelves – wow, now that’s not something I see every year.  I’m sure re-reads account for that at least a little bit, but I’d like to continue reading from my own collections more into 2015.  I own some wonderful books that deserve attention!

Coming up on Wednesday is Part II: my top ten favorite books read this year.  I did read some great books in 2014, so that ought to be fun.  Stay tuned!

How’d your 2014 reading go?  Were you a machine, or did you drift in and out of a reading slump, like I did?

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Baby Monsoon

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Oh boy!  Baby joy!

Back in July, when I called my high school BFF and told her that I was expecting a second little munchkin, one of the first things she asked me was whether I wanted a baby shower.  You see, I’m not a particularly fussy girl and I don’t love to be the center of attention… and showers for second-time moms are done, but not as commonly as showers for first-time moms.  As a second-time mom, you probably don’t need a truckload of baby gear and you’re seasoned enough that you don’t need the advice of experienced moms about things like poopy diapers and 3:00 a.m. feedings.  I know this, and I knew I didn’t need much stuff for this kid… but I confessed that I did want a small shower – a sprinkle, really – because that was something I missed out on last time.  When Peanut was born two months early, she happened to show up ten days before the baby shower my mom and BFF were planning.  All festivities were cancelled and I spent that day (like every other day for the first seven weeks of her life) in the NICU.  So yes, I told BFF, I’d like a sprinkle if it can be done.

“You’re not getting a sprinkle,” she said in reply.  “You’re getting a torrential downpour.”

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We talked about the best time to have a sprinkle.  I suggested Christmas week, since I was reasonably sure I could commit to still being pregnant, and we were planning to be in town anyway.  And it was a done deal.  BFF and my mom put their heads together and came up with just the very party I’d hoped for – a sweet, simple gathering of the ladies I love the most, all there to celebrate our new little buddy-to-be.

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Before the sprinkle started, my mom picked up a dozen blue balloons.  Peanut immediately claimed them all as her own.  (Unfortunately for her, she was going to have to share with the two other littles that attended the party – BFF’s three-year-old daughter, and another friend’s fifteen-month-old son.  Hey, with a little brother on the way, she had to learn sharing sometime…)

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Peanut was delighted to have another opportunity to wear her “style shoes.”  And she picked out the dress herself!  Good taste, right?  She must have gotten her fashion sense from somewhere else, because goodness knows I don’t have any.

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The shower was, as I said, very simple – no games, no silliness, no smelling anything in diapers or wrapping toilet paper around my midsection thankyouverymuch – we just enjoyed each other’s company, had a yummy catered lunch (complete with cupcakes delivered by BFF’s husband) and chatted.  Perfect!  Peanut logged quality time in any available lap.  Here she is, above, conning my friend A into reading to her from a set of “Frozen” board books she got for Christmas.  (Peanut has patented what we call the “lap-back-up,” in which she motors in reverse, book in hand, into the nearest free lap.)  We think she has some kind of radar for mom laps in particular, because she immediately identified A (who has the fifteen-month-old mentioned above) as a good candidate for snuggles and reading.  A was a good sport about it.

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Peanut got extra lucky, because her aunts were there!  Auntie Em and Aunt Grace both came from long distances away to celebrate their new nephew-to-be, and Peanut was delighted to have her favorite babysitters there. (We were only missing Aunt Danielle.)  Auntie Em and Aunt Grace both were victims of the lap-back-up, too.

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After lunch and cupcakes, I opened gifts.  Like I said, we really didn’t need much – or anything – but my family and friends wanted to make sure that the new little guy was plenty spoiled anyway!  He got lots of boy clothes (including a superhero cape and a mini professor outfit), and plenty of books and toys – including a set of trucks that I hope he shares, because I want to play with them too.

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And this awesome sweater, which I wish came in my size!

It was just a perfect day.  Getting the celebration I missed out on last time meant so much to me – after missing out on the experience with Peanut because of her surprise early arrival, I was so unbelievably grateful to be able to smile and celebrate this time around.  Thanks, Mom and BFF, for a perfect baby shower!

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Reading Round-Up: December 2014

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Reading is my oldest and favorite hobby.  I literally can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t love to curl up with a good book.  Here are my reads for December, 2014…

A Merry Christmas, and Other Stories, by Louisa May Alcott – I’ve said it before, Penguin Classics is killing it lately.  No sooner did I complete my Drop Caps collection (still looking for the perfect place to display them) did they introduce Penguin Christmas Classics, and obviously I needed all five.  (I only bought three, though – have to save something for next year.)  One of the gorgeous editions I brought home was Louisa May Alcott’s collection of Christmas stories.  The title piece, “A Merry Christmas,” was actually an excerpt from Little Women, so I’d read it before.  But the rest were new to me and were delightful reads in the Alcott mold – pretty stories of the Christmas spirit with an undertone of feminism and awareness of social inequalities.  I loved them and will be making this a holiday tradition.

No Holly for Miss Quinn, by Miss Read – Another holiday read of mine, for at least the past three years, I had to look in on Miss Quinn again.  I didn’t make time for Village Christmas this year, but I couldn’t let the month pass without a visit to Fairacre.  Quiet, introverted Miss Quinn is hoping for a solitary Christmas to finish painting her living room – but when her sister-in-law fall unexpectedly ill, she is pressed into aunt service.  It’s not the Christmas Miss Quinn was looking for, but what she finds is a holiday filled with the warmth and family joy she’s been missing (and a good dose of respect for what mothers deal with on a daily basis!).  This is one of my favorite Fairacre tales.

Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson – This slim but lovely volume has been on my to-read list for ages, and now that Robinson has just published a third book about the characters first introduced here, I felt I had to read it.  The Rev. John Ames is an aging, dying minister in the town of Gilead, Iowa.  Knowing that he will not be around to raise his young son, he writes instead a long letter filled with the wisdom he has acquired over his years.  It’s a story about love lost and found, and about the relationships between fathers and sons – between Ames’ father and grandfather, between Ames and his father, between his best friend Rev. Boughton and Boughton’s wayward son Jack, and even between Ames himself and Jack – and it is going to have to substitute for a relationship between Ames and his little boy.  It’s a lovely, compelling book and I’m glad I finally made the time for it.

Letters from Father Christmas, by J.R.R. Tolkien – The Amazon recommendations engine strikes again!  This is the second time Amazon has recommended a book to me that I’ve loved.  (I forget the first, but I know it’s happened before.)  I should probably be worried about a computer knowing so much about my reading preferences.  Anyway.  Christmas was a magical time in the Tolkien household, not just for the usual reasons, but because in addition to their gifts the Tolkien children always received a letter from Father Christmas, usually with silly asides from his assistant the North Polar Bear (who, from what I could tell, spent more time causing disasters than he did actually helping out or getting things done), and illustrated with fun, whimsical pictures of the calamities that seemed to hit the North Pole every year.  As the Tolkien children grew older, the letters became more and more elaborate (and on occasion, included goblin attacks!).  Getting to read all of the letters, collected from the 1920s to the 1940s in this little volume, was such a treat.  I can’t wait to share them with Peanut when she’s older.

Well, so ends another year of reading!  It started out well, but it was harder to keep up a good reading pace after returning to work, and especially this fall, when so many things seemed to go wrong all at once that it threw me into my first reading slump in years.  As you can see from the list of four relatively short books here, I’m not out of the slump yet, but I’m still trying.  I won’t make any predictions about what January’s reading will look like – just say that I enjoyed everything I read this month, and I’m so glad I finally got around to reading Gilead, which I’ve been meaning to pick up for a long while.  I hope you had a more productive reading month than I did (but that you had a nice, relaxing holiday) and send you best wishes for 2015 reading!

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Christmas 2014

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Merry Christmas, one more time, my friends!  I hope that all of my friends who celebrated had a fabulous Christmas (and that those who didn’t got to enjoy a lovely winter weekend and maybe a day or two off work?).  We had a lovely Christmas week, most of which we spent at my parents’ house.  I was looking forward to a nice long break from thinking about work and was really hoping to turn my brain off completely.  That didn’t happen, but I still got a bit of a break and plenty of fun celebrating.  Get ready for a long recap!

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We started our Christmas festivities early with an afternoon trip over the border to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario on the Saturday before Christmas.

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Niagara-on-the-Lake is such a beautiful town.  If you’ve been reading for awhile, you may remember that we spent a weekend there in October of 2013 – but we haven’t been back since, which seems crazy since it’s so close.  Without border traffic (which we were lucky enough to miss this time) it’s only a little more than an hour from our house – close enough for a day trip, or even an afternoon and dinner.  We figured the town would look beautiful all decorated for Christmas, so we decided to make an afternoon excursion there.

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As expected, the town looked lovely.  In quintessentially Canadian fashion, it wasn’t overdone at all – just perfectly festive and beautiful.  Niagara-on-the-Lake sits right in the middle of the Niagara wine region, which is making some excellent wines.  The last time we were here, we did some tasting.  That was out of the question for me this time, but I still found plenty to do, including finishing up my Christmas shopping and sipping a cup of the best hot cocoa I’ve ever had.

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There was a Santa Claus greeting customers outside a toy store.  We tried to entice Peanut to get her picture taken with him, but she was having none of it.  He was a good Santa, too – he didn’t get in her face at all, but gave her a jolly wave from ten feet or so away, and when Peanut plastered herself to my leg he didn’t press the issue.  Maybe next year…

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She was, however, delighted to spend a good fifteen minutes standing in this shrub.  Hey, whatever gets ya in the holiday spirit, kid.

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After we communed with the shrub we wandered over to the town park, which has a cool playground.  Peanut enjoyed the swings just as much as she did back in 2013.  And then she did something she couldn’t have done in 2013 – went down the slide!  Such a big girl.

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After we got ourselves nice and chilled on the playground, we warmed up with one more walk through town, and a stop for wood-fired pizza on the way home.  (It was good, but still couldn’t compare to Pizzeria Paradiso in Old Town Alexandria… so far, nothing we’ve found here does.)  After seeing how seamless and easy it was to spend just a few hours in Niagara-on-the-Lake, especially without hitting traffic at the border either going or coming, I think we’re going to try to do this again very soon.

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The next day, on Sunday, we hosted Zan and Paul for an evening of Christmas treat baking (for the ladies) and football watching (for the men).  The guys had a good time watching the game and snacking on the delicious turkey pumpkin chili that Zan brought over in her CrockPot, and Zan and I had a fairly productive time in the kitchen:

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I made chocolate candy cane truffles and raspberry-almond thumbprint cookies, and Zan pitched in peanut butter balls and peppermint bark.  Both of Zan’s treats came out fabulously well, and the thumbprints were ahhhhhh-mazing, but I was disappointed in my truffles.  I used to make them so often that I had them down to a science, but I guess I’ve lost my touch because the texture of these seemed off.  People still ate them, though.

We had so much fun hanging with our friends and making messes in the kitchen and family room.  The highlight of the evening, though, was watching Peanut flirt with Paul.  I’ve never seen her take to a non-related male so well.  She is crazy for her daddy, of course, and she loves her grandpas and my brother, but she’s always been extremely wary of any other man.  Not so with Paul, though.  She spent most of the evening climbing on him, serenading him with the “Muffin Man” song, and exhorting him to “Look at the tree, Uncle!”  So funny.  Poor Paul just wanted to watch football… and I’m a wee bit ashamed to admit that Zan and I were too busy laughing at him to pull the little monkey off his back.

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After our fun evening with our Zan and Paul, we put in one more day at the office and then it was off to Albany to celebrate the holiday with my side of the family.  We spent Tuesday night observing our tradition of dinner and lights in Washington Park with our very dear old friend Seth.

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Seth was in the holiday spirit for sure!  Would you believe that we’ve kept this tradition going for thirteen years now?  Seth and I met as freshmen at Cornell and quickly became good friends.  We started our lights-and-dinner tradition back in 2001, when we were juniors in college.  Hubby joined us for the first time in 2005 (our first married Christmas), and the only year we’ve missed was 2012.  (The lights are up by Thanksgiving, so we’ve been able to carry on our tradition even in years that hubby and I spent Christmas in Buffalo and Thanksgiving in Albany, but in 2012 we stayed in D.C. for both holidays, since Peanut was so very tiny and still fragile at the time.)

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Even though we saw Seth last Christmas, he had never met Peanut – we left her home with Nana in 2013.  We had high hopes, after the way Peanut took to Paul, that Seth would be a similar hit.  She wasn’t quite as obsessed with him as she was with Paul (still laughing, over here) but she warmed up to him fast, especially after we clued him in on the secret to Peanut’s affections: pretend your hand is a bunny and hop it around the table.  I can’t resist that move, either.  (Just kidding.)

Anyway, we enjoyed an early dinner at The Merry Monk, the same Belgian restaurant our little group hit in 2013 – hubby was craving mussels and Belgian beer in a big way.  We enjoyed a Bavarian pretzel appetizer, and all three of us got mussels.  Seth and hubby got their beers; Peanut and I stuck to water.  The food was as delicious as I remembered it, and then it was time for…

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Lights!  The display in Washington Park is actually really good.  We saw all of our old favorites (I love the Victorian Village) and there were a few new installations this year.  (All photos courtesy of Seth, who was snapping away with my iPhone in the front seat while I pointed out the best displays to Peanut in the back.)

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All of the installations were good, but the highlight was…

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R2-D2!  He was new this year.  Hubby thought he looked more like Mr. Potato Head, but Seth and I thought he looked just like the original.  May the force be with you, Artoo!  (Nerd alert: that’s how his name is spelled in the books.)

The next day was Christmas Eve.  We visited my grandmama in the morning and spent the rest of the day quietly at my parents’ house – playing with Peanut, wrapping gifts, and attending the 6:00 p.m. church service.  (We’d hoped to go at 4:00, but when my parents arrived at the church at 3:30, intending to save us seats, it was already standing room only, so they turned around and drove right back home.)  After church we enjoyed a dinner of crab cakes prepared by my dad – yum – and then crept into our beds to wait for Santa…

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And Santa definitely didn’t forget us this year!

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Peanut was up early on Christmas morning, clamoring to go downstairs.  I don’t think she really understood that there were presents down there, so it was pure coincidence that she was tugging at us from 6:30 onward, shrieking, “Go downstairs!  WANT GO DOWNSTAIRS!”  We made her wait until Nana and Grandad woke up, and we were down opening presents by 7:30.

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Peanut did well, as usual.  She’s definitely on the nice list.  She got Tinker Bell, Periwinkle and Zarina dolls, stuffed Pooh and friends, and plenty of books, games, toys and clothes.  We had a nice Christmas too, but the best part was seeing Peanut experience the morning.  She was a little bit skeptical at first, and Nana ended up opening most of her presents for her, but Peanut was definitely interested in what was in those packages – especially when she saw a bit of pixie wing or Eeyore tail revealed.  Oh, and Nana got some cabin socks, which Peanut also attempted to claim for herself.

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You can laugh all you want, but I think the best part for me was seeing Peanut open up her Weebles treehouse.  Anyone else have Weebles as a kid?  I had the Weebles haunted house and it was one of my favorite toys.  (I don’t know what became of it, but it was a lot of fun there for a good long while.)  I don’t know if Weebles went away and were suddenly brought back, or if I’m just in tune with the hot toddler toys now where I wasn’t before, but I was irrationally excited when I saw the Weebles treehouse on a list of the top gifts for the preschool set.  I knew Peanut had to have it.

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Okay, I wanted to play with it too.

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Fortunately, Peanut seems to really like her Weebles treehouse… and her Pixie Hollow friends… and the Hundred Acre Wood crew… and her mouse slippers… and everything else that Santa left for her this year.  Like I said, she was definitely on the nice list.

And there you have it – our Christmas festivities in one big photo dump!  I have another big recap coming up later in the week – my baby shower, which we celebrated on the Saturday after Christmas!  Can’t wait to share all that cuteness with you…

Merry Christmas again, my friends!  I hope your holiday week was as full of laughter and joy as ours was.

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2015 Goals, Baby!

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Happy 2015, my friends!  I hope you had a rollicking good time this New Year’s (or went to bed before 9:00, if that’s your thing… sounds pretty good to me) and that you’re ready to make 2015 the best year yet.  It’s no secret that I love celebrating the new year.  Blah, blah, blah, no one keeps their resolutions, and blah, blah, blah, why do you need a new calendar year to make the changes you want in your life, and yes, I know, but I love the thought of a blank slate.  All that time and space just waiting for me to fill it with laughter, and fun, and learning, and adventure.  So let’s talk 2015.

I have big dreams for this year.  We’re finally settled in a town and a house and jobs, and I think we can turn our attention to really living well this year.  These big dreams have been taking up a lot of my head space lately, and here’s what I’m thinking.

Have a baby.  Ideally, a full-term, healthy baby!  Just about two-and-a-half months to go in this pregnancy, if I make it to full term, which I am trying so hard to do.  I feel pretty good about how this pregnancy is going, so far, but I also know how quickly everything can fall apart.  So I’m grateful for every day that Nugget bakes happily away, and I am focusing on doing what I can do to keep him in there as long as possible.  Grow, Nugget, grow!

Focus on immediate family.  Hubby and I have had a lot of conversations about this in recent months.  We’ve leaned heavily on our “village,” really, ever since Peanut was born, and they’ve come through for us in ways I could never have imagined – especially my parents.  But we’ve also learned some important lessons about not letting ourselves get too wrapped up in, or letting our identity be defined by, extended family.  We’ve both been feeling that we need to spend 2015 really focusing on our own little unit of three (and eventually four, when Nugget joins us in March but not before, okay little dude?).  I think it will be good for us to spend more time bonding as an immediate family and less time worrying about what’s going on outside our own four walls.

Keep growing in our new region.  I’ll probably always be homesick for northern Virginia, and I’m not going to fight against that because it’d be a frustrating, pointless battle.  But there’s so much good stuff to discover here.  We worked on that last year and we started to find “our places,” which are so important to making a home in a new city or region – but I know there’s more out there waiting for us.  I expect we’ll be hibernating for a little while when Nugget first arrives, but come spring, I’d like us to get out there and keep making WNY our own, because we plan to be here for awhile.

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Those are some major plans for the year, and I expect 2015 to be pretty eventful as a result.  But when I think about what the year will look like, I also think about smaller things – smaller, but still important.  If at the end of the year I can say I’ve accomplished some of these littler goals, I think I’ll be able to look back with a big smile on my face.

Plant a garden with Peanut.  I have been wanting a special activity to do with Peanut, just the two of us, after her brother is born.  I know he is going to need a lot of love and attention, and I want her to know that she’s still cherished just as much as she always has been.  I think some one-on-one Mommy-Peanut bonding is in order – and what better way to bond than by digging in the dirt together?  I’ve never had a successful garden – we tried a few times in Virginia, but it never worked out – but I’m determined to do this one right.  I’m not sure if the first spring’s garden will be a full-blown effort or just some pots on our back patio, but either way it’s going to be our thing to do together, and I hope it will also yield some yummy treats for us to cook up in the kitchen.  (WNY friends with gardening expertise, consider this my plea for help – any tips you can share on planting a successful garden will be much appreciated!)

Marathon or bust!  I really, really, really wanted 2014 to be the year I tackled the big, bad 26.2, and I was hoping that 2015 would see me going after marathon number two.  It didn’t happen last year – although pregnancy is its own kind of marathon – and I deferred my entry to this year’s race.  I’m planning to start building up my running base just as soon as I’m recovered from Nuggetpalooza, and I am determined that this year will be my year.  This is a big, long-term dream of mine.

Start juicing.  When we lived in the city, we were just a short walk from a funky little juice bar, where I would stop a few times every week for fresh juice.  (My favorite was the “Elvis Parsley” – carrot, cucumber, lemon, and parsley.)  Now that we’ve moved to the country, I can’t just trot down the street for my juice fix.  For months I’ve been saying I wanted to start juicing at home, and I’ve even tried a few times with my VitaMix (which works, but straining the juice is a paaaaaaain).  I got a juicer for Christmas and I can’t wait to start using it and get my veggie juice fix whenever I want it.

Use my dSLR more.  I’ve done really well with using Instagram to document our family moments almost every day, and I’m planning to keep that up.  But after I toted my big camera to Knox Farm to capture some pics of Peanut playing in the snow, I was reminded of what beautiful pictures it takes.  Now I’m motivated to use it a lot more in the hopes of getting some special family pictures to display in our home, and making our family yearbook a better product than ever.  And of course, with our new little buddy, I’ll have another adorable photography subject!  The big camera needs to make many more appearances this year.

Do at least one home project every month.  Our house has great bones and a lot of potential, but it’s very dated and needs a lot of cosmetic help.  (Unless you think the eighties were some kind of decorating renaissance, in which case… well, I’m not sure what.)  I have a few high-priority items, including painting the brick fireplace and installing a new mantle in the family room, updating the paint colors in the rest of the house, and changing out some dated fixtures.  There are also a few longer-term goals we have, including new windows and new floors, and we’re exploring whether one of those items might be in the budget for the year.  And then there’s the little fella who is joining our family and is going to need a cute nursery space all his own.  We have a lot to do!  We’ve already done a bit (scraping the popcorn ceilings before we moved in made a huge difference) but there’s still a lot to do.  The good news with all of this is, we have plenty of opportunity to make it a really personal space.  I have lots of ideas for updating and personalizing the house, and I hope to put quite a few of them into action this year.

Get back into yoga, and try out barre classes.  I love yoga, and it really bugs me that I haven’t made more space for it in my life.  Now that Stroller Strides is over (sniff) I have more free workout time and dollars, so I need to get back to the studio.  That means prenatal classes for a little while, and then hopefully a regular vinyasa practice.  I also want to try barre classes, which have intrigued me for some time.  Pregnancy’s not a great time to start new workouts – even though I hear barre is a great prenatal workout – so I’m sticking with light jogging, walking, and weights, all of which I’m used to doing – and saving the barre classes for a fun new workout adventure post-Nugget.

Get organized.  I’m counting on late pregnancy nesting urges (if I get that far, please stay in, Nugget!) to give me a boost of organizing energy, because my closets and pantry desperately need it.  I am always staring wide-eyed at those impeccably organized storage spaces in Martha’s magazines and wondering why I can’t seem to get that organized.  (Toddler?  Law firm job?  Life?  I dunno.)  Once again, I’m going to try.  Hand-in-hand with getting organized, I think, will go efforts to live greener.  In past years we made a habit of certain green practices around the house; some of those, we’ve kept up, but others have fallen by the wayside as we have been focused on settling into our new space.  I expect that the more organized I am, the better I will be able to re-establish those green practices that we’ve slacked on recently.

Lose the baby weight.  Duh.  It’s for a good cause and I don’t mind doing what I need to do to grow a healthy baby, but I want to be back in my jeans in a reasonable time frame after Nugget arrives.  We’re not supposed to say that, are we?  It’s all about how I feel, etc.  Well, yes, but dangit, I want to lose the baby weight.  There.  I said it.  I did lose all the baby weight after Peanut, very gradually, so I’m confident I can do it again.  That’ll mean a few Whole30s, for sure – tried and true for me at this point – and I’m also hoping to join the Y and make a habit of going.  But if I focus on making the healthiest choices possible each day, I’m sure I’ll get to where I want to be.

Hike in a different place every month.  This goes hand-in-hand with my ongoing mission to explore and learn to love our new environment, but I also think it will be a fun project for the year.  We’re planning to continue our seasonal hikes, this time at Reinstein Woods Nature Preserve in Depew, but I also want to explore some different trails and profile fun local hikes in this space.  Some might be repeats – I’m sure we’ll be back at local favorites Tifft Nature Preserve and Knox Farm State Park – but I hope to discover some beautiful new outdoor wonders and of course I’ll share.

Take a family vacation – or two!  Hubby and I have not been on a real vacation – one where we are away, unwinding and exploring, for a week or more – since 2011.  2011, people.  For two people who love to travel as much as we do, that’s just unacceptable.  A lot has happened since our October 2011 jaunt across the pond to England: a pregnancy, a preemie, tough times at work, a big move and new job for hubby, a stint as a SAHM and resulting budget-tightening, a new job for me, another pregnancy…  We desperately need to get away.  The good news is, we have one vacation already in the works for this summer, and I’m hoping that we’ll both be established enough at work and comfortable enough with two kids to make another one (probably closer to home) work for the fall.  We need it.

Date nights, for realsies.  Another thing we have let slide.  I can count the number of date nights hubby and I have had since Peanut was born on one hand.  One hand, people.  And I don’t even need all of the fingers.  That’s just sad.  And it’s another thing we’ve talked about a lot lately: the need to focus on keeping our marriage strong.  With another little one on the way, it’s not exactly going to get easier to leave the house.  So finding a trustworthy local teenaged girl to call on for babysitting services is high on the agenda.  And then I am going to need to figure out how to drag myself out the door and away from the kids when the time comes.  But we’ve got to make this a priority, and we’re both committed to getting out and enjoying some time as a couple, without being Mommy and Daddy, for a few hours on a regular basis.

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Wow, that’s quite the list.  In reading it over, I’m sure I won’t get to all of these things.  But that’s okay – 2015 is going to be all about doing what I can do, and adjusting to life with two kids (whoa).  Some of these plans are more important to me than others, and I really, really hope the garden and the vacations happen, but really I’m just looking to have a good year, enjoy life as a family of four, and try to be as healthy as possible every day.  I think I can do that.

What’s on your agenda for 2015?

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A Look Back at 2014

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Well, here we are again – the last day of another year.  They seem to be getting faster – anyone else having that experience?  As much as I love looking ahead to the blank slate of the year to come, it’s usually a little bittersweet to say goodbye to the old year.  And before I bid the old year auld lang syne and whatnot, I like to take a look back at what I’ve done and thought and blogged over the past twelve months.

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In January, I set ambitious goals for the year, showed you around some of our favorite Buffalo dining spots, trained for my second half marathon, and warmed up with a re-read of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series (a childhood favorite that I enjoyed just as much as ever).

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In February, the biggest event was Peanut turning eighteen months old!  And walking and talking and generally unleashing more adorableness on the world every day.  We also enjoyed plenty of family fun – like “Take Your Child to the Library Day,” and a wintry stroll through the charming village of East Aurora.  Oh, yeah, and I ran (and crushed) my second half marathon.

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In March, I accepted a job offer and headed back to the office, ending my stint as a stay-at-home-mom.  It was bittersweet, because while I was excited about the new opportunity and glad to contribute to the family income again, I loved having that time at home with Peanut and I wish it could have lasted forever.  I also shared my comfort reads and worked on loving winter, and we took the first of our seasonal hikes through Tifft Nature Preserve and we visited the Buffalo Botanical Gardens for a third time so that Peanut could continue to commune with the koi pond.

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In April, I continued to enjoy being back to a working routine, while making plenty of time for family fun.  We dressed Peanut up and celebrated another Easter.  I also participated in my first readathon and shared some of Emily Bronte’s poetry for National Poetry Month.

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In May, it was all about biking and running.  We started the month with a trip to New York City, where I joined my dad, brother, and my brother’s then-girlfriend (keep reading – now she’s his WIFE!) in riding forty miles through the NYC streets for the Five Boro Bike Tour.  That was the highlight of the month!  But I also made time for running, including dominating the second leg of the Buffalo Marathon Relay on a team with some friends from Stroller Strides… and then I bookended the month with another epic bike journey: the Skyride, twenty-nine miles through Buffalo, including over the famed Skyway.  I also celebrated my second Mother’s Day and took some time to enjoy my amazing kid.

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In June, I continued putting miles on my feet.  We took our spring hike through Tifft Nature Preserve, I traveled to Albany for work and ran a 5K (that really wasn’t a 5K) with my dad, and I crushed my third half marathon with a thirteen-minute PR!

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In July, we had plenty of local fun, including attending the Taste of Buffalo and hiking at Knox Farm State Park, but even more fun was travel at the beginning of the month.  We attended a friend’s wedding in Central Massachusetts, spent a day at my parents’ lakeside cottage on the way home and – the best part of all – climbed our first two Adirondack high peaks!  Oh, yeah, and we got some big news (that we kept under wraps for a good long while after)… our family would be growing by one Nugget in 2015!

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In August, incredibly, Peanut turned TWO YEARS OLD.  Seriously, the time is just flying.  We celebrated with a family party in Chestnut Ridge Park and it was a blast.  We also went to the Erie County Fair and I participated in The Color Run, which was a wild and wacky good time, and in the Biggest Loser Half Marathon, which was not as good of a time.  We also finally made it to Letchworth State Park with our friends Zan and Paul.  And, oh yeah, we celebrated nine years of marriage and closed on our house ON THE SAME DAY.  We moved in on the very last day of the month and started the long process of unpacking, settling in, and dealing with broken household appliances – ah, home ownership.

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In September, the big event was my brother Dan’s wedding in Camden, Maine.  Dan and Danielle were married on a schooner and it was personal and lovely and so very them.  We were honored to celebrate with them and I know they are in for a long and wonderful life together.  We also squeezed in our third seasonal Tifft hike, getting our summer walk done just before the Equinox and the official end to the season.

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In October, it sort of felt like everything fell apart.  Peanut broke her finger at school, and my car died by the side of the road as I was driving her home from the emergency room that same day, which just seemed like a big cosmic joke (and not a very funny one at that).  Meanwhile, we dealt with a host of other issues around the house, mainly in the form of broken appliances.  My favorite month of the year wasn’t much fun in 2014.  But we did get in an apple-picking excursion, our fourth seasonal Tifft hike (with Zan and Paul!), and a trip to the pumpkin patch to celebrate Halloween – so there were some good moments mixed in with all the stress.

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In November, I was mostly hanging on for dear life as we continued trying to fix all the broken stuff.  Hubby took a trip out of state to help care for a sick friend for about a week and a half, and my parents came to keep me company while he was gone – and they spent much of their visit helping me unpack and break down some of the boxes that were still littering my house.  And while they were here, my dad and I ran our first cross-country 5K together!  When hubby returned we dealt with some family stress, got hit with six feet of snow during “Winter Storm Knife,” and I mused about cultivating a feeling of gratitude even during a difficult year.  I closed out the month by running the Turkey Trot and then returning home for a Thanksgiving “smalliday” with hubby and Peanut – it wasn’t the holiday we’d expected, but we focused on Peanut and how grateful we are to have her in our lives.

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In December, it’s been more hanging on for dear life as I’ve had a crush of work deadlines to wind up the year.  But we escaped to my parents’ place for a wonderful Christmas week, during which we had a blast watching Peanut experience the joys of the holiday, seeing friends, celebrating my baby shower, and even squeezing in a date night (thanks for babysitting, Mom and Dad!).  Recaps to come starting next week.

And now, onward to 2015… I wonder what this year will have in store for our little family.  I don’t suppose it’ll get any quieter, with another kid in the house!  But I hope it’s a good one, full of laughter and learning and love… and I hope the same for you, too.

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2014 Goals In Review

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Oh, 2014.  You were some year.  Some year, all right.

At the beginning of the year, I said that instead of setting goals or making resolutions, I was going to set an intention for the year and try to live by that intention – turning 2014, ideally, into one long yoga practice.  My intention for 2014 was “a better life.”  So rather than assign myself tasks with the plan of grading my efforts at the end of the year, I just wanted to live better.  (I mean, I always want to live better… but in 2014, I really wanted to make a practice of it.)

Of course, I had some ideas about what “a better life” would look like.  I’ve put a few of them into practice, and ifallen short on others – isn’t that always the way?

A better life means getting organized.  This is always a process, isn’t it?  I am doing… okay… on the organizing front.  I really wanted to organize my life while we were living in our little city rental, especially because just on the basis of square footage, it was a major downsizing.  But then… opportunities happened, and I found myself heading back to the office, which both gave me less time to organize things and also gave us the financial wherewithal to buy a bigger house.  So we did that.  And I’ve been gradually unpacking and organizing the new place ever since.  I wish it was a faster-moving process – I don’t think anyone enjoys living in a sea of boxes – but my parents’ hardworking visit back in November certainly helped me move in the right direction.

A better life means a life lived outside.  I think that I did really well living my life outside last year.  We enjoyed family hikes almost every weekend, including four seasons of hiking at Tifft Nature Preserve, multiple visits to Knox Farm, a trip to Letchworth with our friends Zan and Paul, and even our first two Adirondack high peaks!  In addition to all the hiking, we spent hours exploring our city neighborhood and then, later, our big country yard.  I ran three half marathons.  We hosted Peanut’s second birthday party at Chestnut Ridge State Park.  We’ve just made it a family habit to spend our time outdoors whenever we can, and I’m proud of that.

A better life means unplugging.  Meh.  I could have done better with this one.  I’ve done relatively well with not being on my phone when I’m hanging out with Peanut, because I want her to have my full attention, and scrolling through Twitter is not giving her my full attention.  But another thing I wanted to do this year was use Instagram more to capture daily moments for our family.  So I’m still holding my phone up quite a lot, chasing the perfect adorable shot.  I’m not sure how to balance this, but I’m working on it.  I always feel a little guilty about the incessant picture-taking, but I like having those memories.

A better life means running a race that scares me.  This didn’t happen.  I had high hopes for tackling the big, bad 26.2 this year, but life (pregnancy) intervened.  I deferred on my registration for the Mohawk-Hudson River Marathon and hope to be ready to run it in October of 2015 instead.

A better life means cooking more.  I think I did decently well with this.  It was a challenge for awhile, when we were living in our crummy rental with the worst kitchen ever (seriously, even my pocket-sized kitchen in my first law school apartment was at least cute, with pretty stainless steel counters).  But once we moved into our new house, with its beautiful kitchen (made even more beautiful by the installation of a Bosch double wall oven, come to mama) it’s been a lot easier to feel inspired.  I’m hoping that translates into even more cooking in the new year… and who knows?  Maybe I’ll even have the occasional recipe to share on here again.

A better life means exploring my new environment.  Working on this one, always.  I’m not going to lie to you and say that I don’t miss DC every single day.  Still, after more than a year of living in WNY.  But I’ve been working on finding new happy places – looking for new local hiking trails to explore, getting to know Tifft Nature Preserve in every season, letting Peanut run around Knox Farm, grabbing a tea in East Aurora before a family stroll, working out at Glen Falls Park with my local mom friends… and I know there are lots more great places here, just waiting for me to find them.

A better life means improving someone else’s life.  I’ve done my best with this one, and tried to keep a focus on donating my time and money where I could this year.  I spent about five months of the year (and a few months in 2013, too) volunteering as a tutor for Literacy New York, but ultimately had to take a step back.  I was paired with a student who did not really have the time for tutoring, and no-call-no-showed about half of our scheduled sessions, leaving me frustrated when I’d spend two hours sitting in the library waiting for her.  The program directors were in the process of placing me with a different student (nothing personal, but they have a waiting list and it’s not fair to make others cool their heels while one student only comes to half the sessions) but work heated up and we were in the lengthy process of looking for housing, so I went inactive on the volunteer rolls rather than commit time I no longer had.  I’m still hoping to get back to it, but with everything that’s been going on and with a new baby on the way, it’s probably not going to be an option for awhile.  After I withdrew from active volunteering, I made it a priority to donate my money instead, and over the year I’ve given to several causes that I feel strongly about, donating to both national and local organizations.  I’m proud that I’ve made donations a priority this year and plan to continue, but I’m also looking forward to the day when I can share the joy of volunteering with Peanut.  I want her to grow up with volunteering as a big part of her life, and I can’t wait for mother-daughter trips to pack food at the local food bank.  That’d be chaos right now, though (can you imagine?!) so monetary contributions will be the focus for at least a few years.

Overall, I tried hard to live well in 2014.  There’s always room for improvement, but we did better our lives in a major way when we moved out of our cramped city rental and into a big, comfortable country home, when we focused on spending time together as a family outdoors, and when we worked on exploring our new region and finding places and things to enjoy together and separately.  And next year should be even better – with a new little buddy to love and shower with kisses and snuggles, and a whole year to fix up our new living space and make it more “us” – I can’t wait.

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Christmas Quibbles

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Merry  day after Christmas to all my friends who celebrated yesterday (and may still be celebrating)!  And happy Friday to my friends who were not celebrating this week.  I’m sure that your Feedly overfloweth with sweet and sentimental Christmas messages, and I wish all of that stuff for you, of course.  But rather than toss in a Bible verse or Christmas carol lyric of my own this year, I thought I’d get a little sillier and talk about the phenomenon I think of as Christmas Quibbles.  You know what I mean. I’m not talking about the quibbling that happens at Christmas dinner when Grandpa and Uncle Bootsie just can’t help getting into politics… or when Aunt Tilda slurps the last of the eggnog and you know she don’t need it amirite?  I’m talking about the quibbling that takes place in every merged household, starting at Thanksgiving (or even before) when we all insist that our childhood holiday traditions are the traditions that must survive in the new home.  If you’re married or living with your significant other, odds are you’ve drawn battle lines… and hey, I hear even roommates can get into it.  We’re not immune in my household, and while for us the war is pretty much over, we certainly got into some spirited debates in our first few married Christmases.  Here are the fronts where the Christmas Quibbles war has been fought in my house:

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The Real Deal, or Go Faux?

Battle status: concluded
Victory: me

I’m not sure there is any Christmas Quibble more ardently fought than the question of whether to buy a new real tree each year, or pull out a faux every holiday season.  Hubby grew up with a real tree, but my family has been firmly in the faux camp for almost as long as I can remember.  We had a real tree my first few Christmases, but I would get so upset to see it lying out on the street at the end of the Christmas celebrations, and I was still very young when my parents bought their faux tree.  I always thought they did it to shut me up (what can I say, I had some big emotions over seeing that poor dead tree) but now that I’m an adult with a home of my own I think they may have had other reasons, too.  It’s awfully nice to not have to water the tree or vacuum up needles every ding-dong day.  Plus, you can leave the tree out longer and extend the season.  I’ve since heard that you have to keep a faux tree at least seven years for it to be a more environmentally friendly option than a real tree, and we’ve got a few years to go on ours before we hit that point, but my parents have had the same tree for decades, so I’d say their Christmas greenery is pretty darn green.  Hubby and I argued over the real-or-faux question a few times early in our marriage, and I pointed out the environmental, money, and work factors, but I ultimately prevailed with my ironclad argument that it would break my heeeeeeeeeeeart to see the tree lying in the streeeeeeeeeet.

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Christmas Lights: A Heavy Question

Battle status: temporary ceasefire
Victory: me (for now)

Another area where hubby and I differ: the twinkle lights.  His family has always used (and still uses to this day) colored lights.  My parents go for white lights.  Once again, we each prefer our own family’s approach to the light question.  This isn’t a reasoned debate where I can point out all the conveniences of white lights over multi-colored.  It’s a deeply ingrained preference on both sides that simply cannot be argued away.  Hubby likes the look of multi-colored lights.  It reminds him of his childhood and he finds it more festive.  I like white lights.  It’s a cleaner look that allows the ornaments and greenery to shine and while I can certainly appreciate that the muti-colored approach is popular, it’s just not for me.  It’s just not.  And I will never change my mind on this point. Our current tree is pre-strung with white lights, and we’re hoping to keep the tree a long time, so you’d think the debate was settled.  I have considered the battle over for years… but lately hubby seems inclined to reopen hostilities.  Just the other day I heard him telling Peanut, “When Daddy was a little boy we had colored lights on our tree, sooooooooooo pretty.”  (That’s fighting dirty, by the way – trying to convert the two-year-old to your side.)  He may have underestimated just how entrenched I am in my position, and just how not afraid to pull circuit breakers I might turn out to be.

To Josh or Not To Josh

Battle Status: ongoing
Victory: too soon to tell

Please tell me that someone else argues with their significant other over Christmas music.  Please.  This is the one area where the battle still rages in my house, because it’s not like a CD is a big investment that we plan to keep for years.  Here’s the situation: I love Josh Groban.  I would listen to him sing names out of a phone book.  Hubby, for some reason, can’t stand him.  (He hates most of my CDs, which he derisively calls “college music,” whatever that means.)  So we argue about this every year when the time comes to put on Christmas music.  Hubby will whip out his phone, with the Christmas Traditional station loaded on Pandora.  I will wave my copy of Josh’s “Noel” over my head like a crazy lady. And apparently the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.  When we hosted our tree-trimming party this year, hubby and his dad engaged in some of the most spirited and creative Josh-bashing I have ever heard.  I tuned into the conversation just in time to hear one of them say, with heavy scorn, “And he obviously never sang treble in an Episcopal choir.”  LOLwut?  (By the way, hubby, I’m pretty sure the lead “singer” of Rammstein also never sang treble in an Episcopal choir.  Just a hunch.)  It’s worth noting that my sister-in-law Emma, who did sing in an Episcopal choir for many years, is firmly pro-Josh.  It probably helps that he’s nice to look at. Anyway, I thought I had hit on the perfect strategy: limit the Christmas music options to Josh, Sarah McLachlan or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.  But Christmas Traditional Pandora was a big blow to my battle plans.  (The joke’s on hubby though… maybe… the other day I heard Josh on Christmas Traditional Pandora.  Check.  Mate.)  Anyway, we’ve ultimately landed in a stalemate.  I agitate for Josh constantly, and hubby occasionally relents.  The rest of the time, I listen to Josh in my car.  I get my daily Josh fix during the season, and hubby mostly avoids him.  Meanwhile, I am eagerly trying to recruit Peanut to the pro-Josh camp.  (That’s right.  I can fight dirty, too.)

I know you have Christmas Quibbles in your house, too, so spill.  Where are the battle lines drawn in your family?

by

A Solo Mommy Day in NYC

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At the end of October, I took a quick solo trip to New York City.  The main purpose of the trip was business: I was attending a big conference in my field.  The conference took place over most of a weekend and I enjoyed spending time with my colleagues, meeting some new contacts and learning a lot about some topics that are still relatively new to me.  I decided to stay on for most of an extra day so that I could do a bit more networking before I left the city.  At the top of my agenda was a coffee date with an attorney from my old firm’s New York office.  I emailed her as soon as I knew that I’d be in town and we excitedly made plans.  I looked forward to that coffee meeting for weeks and it was wonderful – she caught me up on all the news of my old firm, we chatted about life and shared news of our kids, and at the end of the hour she brought me back up to the office to say hello to the old faces and meet a few new folks who had recently joined the firm.  It was wonderful, and completely worth sticking around for.

Of course, coffee only lasted about an hour, and then my former colleague had to get back to work.  And I had some downtime during the conference days, too.  So I made the most of a solo trip to New York and visited some of my favorite spots in the city.

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I’m sure you’re not surprised to hear that I hit the Strand, my favorite New York bookstore.  No trip to NYC is complete without a visit there.  I went on Sunday evening, after the workshops wrapped up but before my group hosted an event.  It was good to step away and take a little time to regroup in a long day.

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I made a beeline for my favorite section, and came away with four new-to-me books (the Strand has a combination of new and used books on the shelves, and I always find some great deals there).  I used to get a tote bag every time I visited, but I have too many now, so I resisted this time.

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I’ve been under the weather most of this fall – thanks, preschool germs! – and can’t take many medications to help with all the sickness because of my pregnancy.  This weekend was no exception – I was coughing, sniffling and sneezing most of the conference.  But I knew that, this being New York, there’d be no shortage of options for my favorite cure-all – green juice.  I scouted around briefly for a juice place near Union Square, where the Strand is located, but decided that rather than wandering the area aimlessly, I’d hit Whole Foods.  I haven’t been to Whole Foods since leaving D.C., so it was nice just to stick my head in a store and take in all the goodness.  The Union Square Whole Foods has a juice bar, so I headed upstairs and got a juice full of green goodness.  I took it outside and enjoyed some people-watching while I sipped.  It was the perfect rejuvenating break between conference festivities.

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On Monday morning, before my coffee meeting, I hit another of my New York favorites – Ess-a-Bagel.  I grabbed my usual order – a giant everything bagel slathered with olive cream cheese.  (It was green olives this time, unlike the kalamata olives they were using last time I was there, so I was a bit bummed about that – I like green olives, but there was just something about that kalamata olive cream cheese.)  One of these days, I’ll make it to Ess-a-Bagel while not pregnant, and get to enjoy some of the incredible-looking smoked salmon.  Until then…

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Yum.  Bagel enjoyed with The Penguin Book of Witches.

After my Monday morning bagel treat, I headed to the aforementioned coffee date.  I had a vague thought of either visiting the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where Madeleine L’Engle was writer-in-residence (I’d visited on a field trip in high school, but not since then) or possibly taking the subway out to Brooklyn and visiting Word, a bookstore I’ve been itching to check out.  In the end, my former colleague and I spent so much time chatting that I didn’t have time for either excursion.  I decided instead to take my time and just walk slowly through the city on my way back to the hotel, where I’d left my luggage and where I’d pick up a cab to the airport.  I quickly realized that most of the fun of Fifth Avenue lay along my route back, so obviously I directed my feet there.

And while I just window-shopped for myself, it didn’t take me long to find myself here:

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Growing up, I had a collection of American Girl dolls, and Peanut has already received her first one (Molly’s friend Emily, which she got for her first Christmas, right before both dolls were discontinued).  I never had a Bitty Baby – I was of the first generation, eight years old when Kirsten, Samantha and Molly were introduced, and Bitty Baby was after my time.  I knew that Bitty Baby would make a sweet playmate for Peanut, though: she’s just beginning to get interested in baby dolls, and Bitty Baby has no small parts she could lose or elaborate hairstyles she could destroy.  I’m sure you can guess what happened.

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I bought Bitty Baby No. 7, the redheaded one, for my little ginger baby, and they’re already tight.  I’m not a big doll person but I make an exception for American Girl. Although man alive, that stuff is expensive, and they roll out more of it all the time.  I’m already eyeing Bitty Baby’s skating outfit and snow book for Peanut’s Christmas haul.  Yes, I’ve totally become that mom.

That was it for my NYC adventures – from American Girl Place I headed back to my hotel, where I just managed to jam Bitty Baby into my carryon, and from there, to JFK.  While I hate being away from hubby and Peanut, it was rejuvenating to have a day to just wander around New York doing whatever came into my head.  A little juice, a little strolling, a little shopping, a little friend time – aside from missing Peanut, it was pretty great.  Mommy time is in scarce supply these days, but I think I took advantage of it when it fell into my lap last month.